Scatter my Dust and Ashes

It’s dusty outside.

Gazing through the south-facing window of the Cameron Library pedway, white specs can be seen littering the air, slowly drifting downwards to blanket the city.

dust |dəst|

1 tiny particles of earth or waste matter lying on the ground or on surfaces carried in the air

- poetic/literary: a dead person’s remains

Drab.  Dusty.  Dead…monton.

It’s no wonder we all feel like dying around this time of the year, if we don’t feel dead already.  The dust of our dead souls has suppressed vivacity.  It’s spring and it’s snowing.

I don’t know what I should have expected, really.  The end of March marks the end of midterms (which students have been writing since the first week of February).  Freedom beckons, the light at the end of the tunnel… Until the realization dawns upon you that you still have a term paper to write, a major project to start finish, a schedule to build for next year, and final exams to look forward to.  How considerate of Mother Nature to parody my mental anguish.  Really sets the mood.

Do you know what I hate most about this place?  This university?  No one does anything.  Sitting in a high traffic area such as I am right now, there are a few people stuffing their faces, several with their noses in books or on laptops (myself included), and only a select few people socializing.  Glimpses of any present socialization reveal talk about marks, profs, papers, equations… and usually this chit-chat happens only briefly, in passing, or while waiting at the microwave to heat up food.  So that they may, too, stuff their faces in solitude.

This institute is set up to drain us of our lives and our souls.  And our money.  It costs about $6000 per annum to enroll in classes, most of which are ultimately irrelevant to what you want to do with your degree.  You want to specialize in cellular biology?  Make sure you pay to take this physics course on mechanical motion that for which you’ll never have a use.  Yet 30 000 people have bought into it.  30 000 dead souls haunt campus everyday, meandering absent-mindedly from place to place, devoid of the vibrancy, empathy, and individualism that characterizes humanity.  Or at least used to.

So much emphasis is on the number, not the knowledge.  Believe me.  I’ve scored considerably high in some courses, and I have no idea what the hell was going on during the lectures, and anything I might have learned has since been lost.  And let’s face it, there are some real idiots around here who somehow pull off the grades required to make it through their degree.  This isn’t a learning institution.  It’s the beginnings of the prophetic zombie apocalypse.  Well, not really.  But let me explain further.

High schools having freshly borne us from their coddling wombs, we’re thrust into this mini-society full of options and expected to make choices.  Here’s the catch – before you can specialize in a field of interest, you have to be generalized.  If you think differently than other people or have different interests, you either suffer for your curiosity, or you cope.  Take the uninteresting and overly general introductory courses.  Give the profs what they want.  Don’t stand out.  Don’t ask stupid questions.  Just fit within the mean and you’ll be fine.  Average is “in” this year.  C’s get degrees, right?

But excellence is the goal – strive for the 4.0.  Why the fucking numbers again?  Is there no better way to assess intelligence, interest, and creativity within the subject?  Okay, but what if you are really just confused and need some help with a difficult concept.  Your professors’ class hours are inconveniently placed within other enrolled classes, and your classmates couldn’t give two shits about your mark, especially when the class is curved.  Nobody wants to help the competition.  Egotistical bastards.

The result?  Tepid, insipid, socially detestable and boring people.  And these people we unleash upon our city.  Then, we complain about the monotony and dub ourselves Deadmonton.  How… creative.  Our minds aren’t permitted to flourish; we’re stuck in this perpetual storm of whiteness, sameness.  And thus, we have drawn the white sheet over ourselves.  The self-proclaimed dead.

When will spring come?

The death of the river flow as the North Saskatchewan freezes over marks the figurative death of Edmontonians.  When the flow frees itself, it takes a flood come spring to cleanse the dust from our souls and to reawaken the humanity within us.  Deadmonton is somehow forgotten and replaced by River City.


I've been frustrated with the university lately.  Probably because of exams, assignments, projects, and building a schedule (I find that building a schedule as an English major is an incredibly painful process).  Anyway.  I opened up my word program yesterday and just started to rant.  This is what came out.  It kind of connects to ideas we were discussing in class about the U of A and if it represents Edmonton or stands alone.  It's also somewhat tied to what I wrote last week at the end.  Not really related to what we've been doing lately, but I thought I'd share it nonetheless.