Monthly Archives: January 2015

Cue the cliché of “what makes a house a home”? Talking about home and what it means to me is full of clichés, but finally, deservingly so.

Home is a place that’s warm. Sure, the heat better be on. But what I mean is the warmth of love and care from the people that you share your roof with. Home is a place that values sharing stories with one another, respecting the troubles of all, and helping with obstacles along the way. There’s a special feeling when you come home from work, plop down beside your loved one’s chair, and just share your mutual days’ adventures. We laugh at each other, cry with each other and smile to each other. The warmth of home is that feeling on Christmas Day when more important than anything else is being together. This kind of warmth is what home brings, right to the heart.

Home is a place that’s open. Free to speak our mind without judgment, valuing individuality and personal experience. It’s a place where you feel like communication is never an issue, and no treading softly on issues that are judgmentally deemed ‘not-to-be-spoken-about’. Don’t get me wrong, home isn’t a place with no conflict. Sometimes communication comes in the form of yelling and screaming, but all in good will, emotional and rightfully so. Home is an environment where we can all yell at each other, but because of passion and emotion not because of anger. A network of open communication within a home is what makes it work, and how the people of that home deal with issues with themselves and others.

Home is a place of trust. Keeping your word is important in any arena of life, but most so at home, with the full expectations of valuing a sense of responsibility for your words and actions. We all have those moments when we come home a little too late to our parents’ liking, only to have them flick on the lights as we’re stumbling up the stairs half minded. Instead of lying and not getting away with it (trust me, we aren’t as believable as we think), we tell the truth. We trust each other to be honest and forward. “Sorry, crazy party. Got a ride home though” has a better ending, then fumbling with your words looking for an excuse. We trust that those around us act with intentions of good will, and expect the same back.

Home is a place of warmth, openness and trust. With these in mind, home to me is unequivocally a place of growth.

Growth. A house isn’t much by itself, but the stories and journeys that take place inside is what matters. A home that is warm, open and trusting allows for growth, personal and spiritual. Kids learn to be adults, and adults…well, they learn to sometimes be kids too. Home is a place that brings people together, to grow together. It’s the struggles and the arguments that ironically bring us closer together. In a home, you learn to value hardships of your own and others, cherishing the moments and opportunities to grow and foster relationships with yourself and others.

Home is a place of warmth, openness, trust and growth to me.

What’s home to you?

Works Cited

Iyer, Pico. “Where Is Home?” TEDGlobal. June 2013. Pico Iyer:. Web. 29 Jan. 2015. <http://www.ted.com/talks/pico_iyer_where_is_home?language=en>.

It was centuries ago, perhaps eons ago. The land and the air was fresh, innocent, clear. There was serenity in the air, a sense of complete peace. The inhabitants of the land with wings, legs, claws and hooves all lived together in matrimony and harmony.

Until the witches started coming. They flew in like haunted spirits, polluting the crisp sky with their dark shadows. The wonderful World as it was became victim to moments of terror at the witches’ will.

One gloomy day, a witch soared through the sky in a horrifying costume, terrorizing the inhabitants. But soon they would forget, recover and sleep in peace.

One gloomy day, a witch propelled herself up above the land and released a devilish burning concoction onto the land and inhabitants, killing many and hurting countless. But soon they would forget, recover and sleep in peace.

One gloomy day, a witch haunted the night sky dressed in the gruesome ripped skin of the inhabitants, scarring the little ones forever with endless nightmares. But soon they would forget, recover and sleep in peace.

One gloomy day, a witch casted herself above the land and inhabitants, and began telling a story. One of suffering, eternal fear, slaughter and bloodshed. One of utter chaos and ruin.

However, the story was too dark, too frightening and too real. The inhabitants never forgot, never recovered and never slept again.

“Take it back. Call that story back” they yelled at the sky towards the shadows of the witches.

But of course, it was too late. For once a story I told, it cannot be called back. Once told, it is loose in the World.

Evil.

Commentary:

There’s something about a story that brings impossibly frightening fiction, into real life. Much like the innocence and serenity of the inhabitants’ land, we are often clean from horrors. Until a story is told that brings to light the evils that exist, and it’s origin. We can forget, recover and sleep in peace following a depressing moment or image in time, however, a story never erases itself.

It’s safe to say writing this story made me feel a little uneasy. But why? I’ve seen scarier movies, heard louder sounds and witnessed darker moments. Telling the story orally was difficult for me at first, but the cyclical and repetitive elements of my story guided me as I told it more and more. Perhaps there is something to be said about memory and orality. Perhaps in the same way, stories told and heard exist in an oral world of our mind that is impossible to replace or erase? Perhaps this is, in a psychological way, why stories like these transcend and remain in the fabric of time and existence?

There’s a part of me that thinks we are these inhabitants, their fear still living in us today. Forever haunted by tales of horror that exist in our World, much more than an image, much more than just a story. Stories have this power.

What kind of stories do you want to tell?

Works Cited

King, Thomas. The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative. Peterbough:Anansi Press. 2003. Print.

Shaw, Martin. On Repetition in Storytelling. The Stanford Storytelling Project. 13 Feb 2013. Web. 25 January 2015. <http://web.stanford.edu/group/storytelling/cgi-bin/joomla/index.php/blog/2013blogs/347-on-repetition-in-storytelling.html>

Transcending Historical Trauma. Welcome to the Elders. Web. 25 January 2015.<http://discoveringourstory.wisdomoftheelders.org/resources/transcending-historical-trauma>

Try reading your favorite passage in your favorite book out loud. Now try and tell me if what you just performed, belonged to an oral culture or written culture? You might find, like me, that often what we read or listen to does not belong to a single realm of oral or written, but rather coexisting Worlds of the oral and the written. Both Edward Chamberlain and Courtney MacNeil serve as interesting evidence to contest a popular understanding of our culture as either oral or written. Macneil quotes Walter Ong in saying that currently, “orality exists either in isolation from literacy, or as subservient to it…mutual interdependency between the two media is not a recognized possibility”. In reality, I feel that even by typing this blog post, I’m participating in both an oral and a written culture, speaking in my mind what I am inscribing onto this page. Chamberlain contributes to this argument in claiming it is a misconception that these two cultures exist separately, and that “all so-called oral cultures are rich in forms of writing, albeit non-syllabic and non-alphabetic ones” (Chamberlain 18). In other words, we cannot simply discount the existence of a written culture in a predominantly oral culture, since “written” can take multiple forms. Both MacNeil and Chamberlain see that orality and literacy come hand in hand, and not separately.

I am drawn to the performance aspect of language, whether everyday story telling or upon a theater stage. Being a theater lover, I connect with this aspect of a co-existing “literature/oralature” pairing that Rosenberg proposes in MacNeil’s work. Especially in the world of performance, there is a close tie between the written text of a performance or story, with its oral expression. Chamberlain importantly claims that we are all involved in “both oral and written traditions…our stories and songs draw on resources of both” (Chamberlain 18). I am inclined to think of our stories and songs as performances, both written in text or an alternative structure of scribing, as well as an oral interpretation with imaginative expression. There is a way in which our stories or performances can exist scientifically and categorically as letters on a page (written or literate culture), as well as in imaginative and magical forms performed or told (oral culture). This is the case especially when different people can interpret a single written story or text differently. In terms of story as performance, the existence of ‘misinterpretation’ seems to suggest a written culture that is dependent on an oral interpretative culture, and not existing separately. When we tell a story to a friend, or when a story is passed from one generation orally down to another, speech and writing becomes hard to separate. MacNeil sums this up perfectly by claiming that “speech and writing are so entangled with each other in our various forms and performance of language”.

So what does all this mean to our current World of heightened technology and communication? In my opinion, the argument that oral and written cultures exist separately is becoming harder to prove as our World advances technologically. Walter Ong suggests a sense of oral cultures living in the present and the permanence of written culture. In fact, speaking in terms of our present society, text has lost a sense of durability and permanence, text messages being deleted instantaneously, and oral cultures can exist through time as recordings and sound-files (MacNeil). Today, we can ‘delete’ or ‘extend’ both oral and written aspects of our culture easily. I think this goes to show the blurring of both oral and written cultures in our present World, and how both of these modes of culture exist not only together, but dependent on each other for existence and performance.

What do you think?

Works Cited:

Chamberlain, Edward. If This is Your Land, Where are Your Stories? Finding Common Ground. Toronto: AA. Knopf. 2003. Print.

MacNeil, Courtney. “Orality.” The Chicago School of Media Theory. Uchicagoedublogs. 2007. Web. 14 Jan 2015. http://lucian.uchicago.edu/blogs/mediatheory/keywords/orality/

Hello all, and allow me to introduce myself to the World! My name is Jeffrey, and welcome to my blog for our journey of Canadian Studies! Born in Richmond, BC but raised in Maple Ridge, one could consider me more of the ‘Canadian’ than ‘Chinese’ in my Canadian-Chinese identity. I grew up a country boy if you ask me, playing hockey outside until midnight and fly fishing during spring breaks. Who am I? Hockey lover, but all sports enthusiast. Retail sales associate, badminton coach and student. Theatre goer and film buff. Pun and wordplay aficionado. There’s more to me, but that’s for later!

I was automatically intrigued by this course, particularly at the intersections between cultures and identities that Canadian studies lends itself to studying. Am I cheering for Canada’s national hockey team only because I am geographically located in Canada? I am after all…Chinese?! A couple previous classes sparked my interest in examining ideas around the construction of a ‘Canadian’ identity, if there is such a thing.

Firstly, I am reminded of a film I was introduced to called “Between: Living in the Hyphen” , that outlines and examines some of the frameworks and concepts relating to a construction of what it means to be ‘Canadian’. Coming from an immigrant family, but identifying as ‘Canadian’, living between two identities is something many of us struggle with day in and day out. Take a look at the film if you have time!

Secondly, I was immediately taken aback to a course I completed in the area of Canadian Theatre, looking at different plays through a timeline by Canadian playwrights, all concerned with ideas of a ‘Canadianess’. My favourite play in our canon of studies was Ins Choi’s “Kim’s Convenience”, about an immigrant family that owns a convenience store and their familial struggles, along with cultural issues and differences surrounding race and gender. The comedic and touching story of this family sparks an interest in me in relation to a sense of story-telling that constructs not only self-identity, but belonging to a ‘national identity’. Particularly, Choi was interested in documenting a story out of countless, about immigrant families and their experiences in Canada.

Ins Choi (Playwright of “Kim’s Convenience) is pictured between his two flags of identity: Korea and Canada. Living in the hyphen?

Both the film and play that I relate this course to relates to a sense of identity formation or discovery as a ‘Canadian’, guided mostly by stories and experiences. These first hand stories from immigrants and ultimately all habitants of Canada can help us begin an organic learning process of what it means to be a ‘Canadian’. This course, and hopefully this blog, I expect will give me (and all of us) an idea of what that means to each and every one of us!

Works Cited:

Derdeyn, Stuart. “Kim’s Convenience and the Immigrant Experience”. The Province. 23 April 2014. Web. 7 January 2015.

Kozak, Nick. “Ins Choi, on the set of his play Kim’s Convenience last year, will take part in Spur Toronto, leading a theatrical walk around the U of T campus on Saturday”. Photograph. The Star. 11 April 2013. Web. 7 January 2015.

Nakagawa, Anne Marie. “Between: Living in the Hyphen”. National Film Board. 2005. Web. 7 January 2015.