As soon as I was done with my yoga on Tuesday morning, I sat down
for the last available three hours of working on my essay before I had to
submit it in class. Most of that time was spent in working out the Modern
Language Association requirements for formatting my in-text citations. With
half an hour left, I read it through again, and made a few quick changes. I
settled on the title, “The Sad Freedom of Peter Pan”. Here was my thesis: “For
children to grow up in a balanced manner requires that they have responsible
adult role models, that they be raised in a loving environment and that they be
allowed the freedom to develop as individuals. Without all three, children can
either stumble into becoming damaged adults or remain in a state of
immaturity.”
I printed up the
essay twice because the first time I hadn’t put my name on every page. I also
had to submit a second copy electronically before I left for class, fifteen
minutes later than usual. I rushed through Little Italy, but still was able to
enjoy the perfume of the wood burning pizza ovens being fired up for the day. I
was five minutes early for class, but a lot of people were late because of
their essays. I handed mine in, fairly satisfied with my argument, but I could
have used an extra day to refine the writing. The guy behind me said he could
have used another day as well, because he’d wasted five hours on Monday
watching the election results.
In the first half
of class we finished our discussion of M. T. Anderson’s “The Astonishing Life
of Octavian Nothing”. The deliberate holes in the narrative correspond to the
blank spaces in the story of the American Revolution. The book is a Bildungsroman, a novel dealing with one
person's formative years or spiritual education.
I commented on a
powerful play on words in an exchange between Octavian and his fellow slave and
mentor, Bono. Octavian argues that “a man is known by his deeds!” but Bono
says, “Yeah, and so is a house!”
In the second half
of the lecture we began to talk about Sherman Alexie’s, “The Absolutely True
Diary of a Part Time Indian”.
There was a
discussion about the use of the term “Indian” by aboriginal peoples of the
American continents to refer to themselves rather than “Native”. I said that
most of the aboriginal people I’ve known, including girlfriends have referred
to themselves as “Indian”. It turns out that my TA, Christina, is a student of
Native Studies. She said she always says “Native” and that Native people have
the right to call themselves Indian but we don’t have the right to refer to
them in that way. It sounds a bit like white liberal pretentiousness to me.
Technically, anyone born in America is a “native American”.
Reservations are
equated with death camps.
The book also
features cartoons, one of which is a split figure of someone on the left side
as being white and on the right side, “Indian”. Various aspects of differences
of accoutrement are displayed on either side, such as “the latest air Jordans”
on the white side and canvas sneakers from aisle 7 at the Safeway Supermarket
on the Indian side. I commented that my Cree ex-girlfriend had told me that
Safeway is owned by the Catholic Church. Later though, I looked this up and
found that it’s an urban myth. Safeway is actually now owned by Sobeys and was
never owned by the Catholic Church.
In the cartoon, the
white person has an expensive watch but on the Indian side is the expression,
“It’s skin thirty!” I’d always remembered, “It’s a hair past a freckle!” Here,
a joke is used to ease the discomfort of poverty. On the Indian side, the
discount prices of items are listed, whereas on the white side there are no
prices.
On the white side
is the statement, “bright future” but on the Indian side, “vanishing past”. I
wonder about the idea of a vanishing past being unique to aboriginal peoples.
In fact, it seems to me that aboriginal peoples have a firmer grip on their
past than most European descendants here in Canada. I, for example, know very
little and care very little about my Scandinavian heritage.
There is a line
from the book: “Poverty doesn’t give you strength or lessons. It just teaches
you how to be poor.”
After class I rode
up to Soudan and Mount Pleasant and then across to Bayview. As I turned the
corner I saw a children’s clothing store called “Never Grow Up”, which was an
interesting coincidence, considering the essay I’d just turned in. That whole
area, south of Eglinton, on both Bayview and Mount Pleasant, is full of
children’s clothing stores, children’s book stores and toy stores.
That night I
watched Buster Keaton’s “The Balloonatic”, but it wasn’t as good as one would
expect from the title.
I read about a
fifth of Sherman Alexie’s, “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian”.
It’s both funny and sad at the same time and the story is engaging. It’s
written in simple language and it’s from the point of view of an adolescent
aboriginal American growing up on a very poor reservation in Washington State.
His white math teacher comes to see him one day and tells him that he’s the
only one on the reservation with any hope of surviving but he has to leave in
order to do so. He immediately tells his parents that he wants to transfer to
the nearby white school. They ask him if he’s sure, but when he says he is,
they say “okay” like they’ve been waiting his whole life for him to ask for
this. I left off with him about to leave. He tells his best friend that he’s
leaving and right away his friend becomes his worst enemy.
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