TWO DOOR CINEMA CLUB

It has been a long day, but a very good one. This morning I gave my presentation on Dante’s Vita Nuova, I was proud of my slides and the snarky words I’d chosen to highlight Dante’s sheer audacity. That was at the start of the class, and my professor said after that, that it was such a high bar for the rest of the class to match up to in their weekly presentations, and that my professor herself didn’t want to follow after me, to conduct the class. She was being very sweet and kind to me, but I felt so relieved and appreciated for the work I had put in. I really like this professor, I want to be friends with her and her co-lecturer, who is such an interesting and fascinating character, with the most wondrous collection of knowledge. My presentation lasted five minutes, so we had one hour and twenty-five minutes left in the class. It is the liberal studies class, where we discuss important texts about love and friendship, and two of my classmates engaged in an organic debate about the parallels between Dante and Diotima (from completely different texts) and they got so involved, one of them began visualising an entire new premise of his own, and drew it in the form of a graph on the blackboard. We mathematically and graphically tried to represent philosophy, and spoke of asymptotes (I’ll give you what the axes represent if you ask me, it’s a long, 2000-year-old story). I felt like I was being treated to the first, unrevised versions of my classmates’ respective future TED talks, if TED talks are a thing that will continue way into the future. Sometimes I worry about money, I wonder how I will afford to pay for all of my tuition, because my loan doesn’t cover all of it, but in that moment, I gave myself leave to enjoy education and knowledge, for the sake of the education and knowledge I was receiving. My heart was full of love and joy. It was a moment that will live in my memory for very, very long, and I cherish it. I wish education were affordable and accessible to everyone who wants it, and not done for the sake of capitalism and earning higher wages. 

I did some work in between, until DnD started at 5pm. Every week, I get more terms added to my lexicon, I learn how to say “nat twenty” for a natural 20 on the die, “soft twenty”, which is when your die adds up with your character bonuses to give you twenty, and today I learned “dice jail”, which is the funniest and most endearing thing I learned about the superstitions of my fellow players, who are otherwise pretty darn intelligent and rational. We were well into our session when one of them said he wanted sushi. I haven’t had sushi in Nanaimo, it’s supposed to be really fresh and good and cheap here, because we’re right by the sea, so I said we should order sushi. Then the girl next to me said she should probably eat because she hadn’t eaten for the day and she had gotten started on a new medication for ADHD, today itself. We took forever to order because all the nearby sushi places that delivered were closed for the day, etc etc, but we got into some pretty whackass hilarious conversations over the phone, as a group. In the end, we couldn’t get sushi but I insisted that we order pizza, for the sake of the girl who hadn’t eaten. It was pretty alright pizza, incomparable to sushi – a food I would marry if I could, but at the end of it, she sent me a personal message on Discord thanking me for being kind, and again, I felt the same love I’d felt with my professor in the morning. I have strong protective instincts, it comes with having many younger siblings. I’m not the best elder sister, but I know the people who hurt my younger siblings, I would be down to… do something to them in return. I also have strong protective instincts because there are a lot of people in my life who have always fought to protect me, because I suppose I’ve had lots of bumps in my life and I didn’t grow up the same way they did, so I learn from these strong protective forces in my life, all the time. Alternatively, I also don’t like it when people don’t have their meals on time, because I know sometimes when you’re not mentally all there, when you’re just too preoccupied with life, it just takes you more spoons to make sure your body is equipped with the basics it needs. Self-care can be impossible for the people who need it most, so I needed to make sure this girl fed herself.

I’ve been quite homesick, there are many things I miss about being home. I feel like I would sound ungrateful if I voiced it, so I don’t, but I know everything I know, everything I love is back there. I love Canada, I love the part of Canada I’m in, every day has been such a joy but I’ve been trying to be honest with all the conflicting feelings I’m having. Today, today I felt at ease, and joyful, and loving and loved, and I was proud of today. Today someone was kind to me and I was able to pass that kindness on.