Seven Days

In a week, when exams are over, I promise myself that I will:

1) Take two days to write fiction instead of academic prose.
2) Bake something divine.
3) Spend at least four consecutive days not thinking about school. This shall include (though is by no means limited to): current program, thesis idea, thesis research, GRE, future prospective grad schools, and future academic career. Theory review and voice/piano pedagogy are also off-limits (all three will likely be thought about on all other days, with the exception of Christmas).
4) Subsequently, make a plan of action about how to rock the ever-loved socks off of next semester.
5) Read historical fiction while having a bubble bath and drinking winter cider.
6) Play the piano and sing as much as I bloody well want!
7) Look into getting some art and photographs for my bedroom so I will not continue to live surrounded by white upon white upon white.
8) Spend time with family and friends.
9) Read the stack of books that are tantalizingly stacked beside my bed.
10) Sleep.

Erstwhile, I am off to the library to study.

Happy Advent

There's something about Advent. It's been my favourite liturgical season for as long as I've been Catholic. Though my faith in Catholicism is waning, the start of this season does make me pause and reflect.

Advent takes place, in the Western hemisphere, at the point of the year when it's dark outside a great percentage of the time. It also coincides with what is, for students, that perpetually busy point of the year, when papers are due, exams are imminent, and life! is! insane! 

It's a reminder to slow down, to take moments to be quiet and realize what a tremendous gift we've been given, simply in being. 

Sometimes life is shrouded in darkness. Wars are fought - amongst nations, amongst communities, amongst families, in our own hearts. Violence, in its many forms, occurs everywhere. Hearts break. Traumatic events occur. It's easy to look at the world, and simply see pain and brokenness and conflict and human stupidity on a mass scale. 

As I prepare for Christmas, and think of Advent, I can't help but feel that little rush of hope I get every year on this first Sunday. That light can come, and bring peace to those wars that we fight amongst others and within ourselves, to those traumas we're trying to heal from, to the hurt we're trying to remedy.

Darkness is not everlasting. 

Happy Advent, everyone. May this be a time of beauty and peace and light in all of your lives! 

Thesis!

It may, perhaps, be somewhat nerdy that on Saturday night, after finally coming up with an exciting enough honours thesis topic (over a year in advance from when my proposal is due), I jumped up from the stack of books and articles about Haydn that I was buried under, and danced around the room (to a keyboard sonata by Haydn, no less).

But I don't care.

I have a workable thesis topic!!!!!!!!!!!!

A Plea

I interrupt my regularly scheduled music-school-related programming to detour, for a moment, to Politics.

Harper is currently pushing a crime bill which will penalize growing pot more harshly than pedophilia.

As someone who has done volunteer work at a sexual assault centre, I've had fair exposure to what childhood rape can do to its survivors. How it can tear lives apart. How it can destroy families. How it can destroy children, and the adults they become (I've also seen tremendous strength, resiliency, and courage from survivors, but they've all worked through a period of intense pain).

Can pot that is grown ruin lives? Undoubtedly. Has pot addiction torn apart families? Of course. But, ultimately, before drug use reaches an addictive level, it is an individual's choice to do drugs. It's also worth noting that not everyone who smokes pot is a drug addict; drugs do not cause life-altering consequences to all users. Someone who grows pot is not forcing pot upon the people who will eventually use it.  

Children do not make a choice to be raped or assaulted. And children who are assaulted suffer consequences and trauma from that decision they didn't make.

Who deserves a harsher punishment: someone who makes a decision that enables someone else to make a decision that may potentially destroy his/her life, or someone who makes a decision that could potentially destroy a child's life?

I plead with all of you: sign a petition, write to your MP, do something -- anything.

Punishing someone who grows marijuana more harshly than someone who rapes a child is not only crazy, it's inhumane.

Kudos to Quebec and Ontario for saying no.
I'd simply remind the rest of the country, once again, that children who are raped don't have that option.

More Pictures

The Dykes of Fundy. My favourite place in Nova Scotia.

 Wolfville, NS. The white-ish tower that looks like a lighthouse is Acadia's University Hall.

Motivational Factors

"I've always imagined that paradise will be a kind of library." - Jorge Luis Borges

"Without music, life would be a mistake." - Nietzsche 

Pictures!

For all ye who do not have FaceBook, and wanted to see pictures. I had no camera for a month, hence the fact that two months into the move, I don't have that many. Well, that and the fact that I spend a slightly inordinate amount of time in the library and in practice rooms. Pictures of those two places can get redundant... ;-)

This is at the local bookstore in Wolfville. I love it. A lot.  

 University Hall.

 The fine arts and literature stacks at Vaughan Memorial. I spend a lot of time here.

 The clock in the music students' lounge. Time is temporal. The circle of fifths is forever.

 One day, I decided I should see what I look like when I'm singing. So when my brain got to "Singing! Mendelssohn! Happy!" and forgot about the camera, I started clicking. Most of the pictures look normal. Except this one. I call it "Rena trying to hit a high G without warming up."

 From the back yard of my apartment building.

 It's a ten-minute drive to rural Nova Scotia, and views like this one.

 The Annapolis Valley.

 Thanksgiving with the roomies.

 The first bit of fall foliage. I got excited.

 The view I have while walking to school each morning. You can sort of see the Dykes of Fundy in the background.

 "Just Us" coffee shop has really awesome signs all over the place. This one's my favourite.

 The view from the study carrels. How unfortunate that I live in such an ugly part of the world. ;-)

 Post-Symphony Nova Scotia's performance at Acadia (with Julian and Anton Kuerti!). Hence the fact that Alexandra, myself, and Morgan are all shiny and glow-y. It's got to be one of the best concerts I've ever been to. Sheer joy.

Stay tuned for the soon-to-come pictures of copious amounts of snow! :-)