Taganga, Colombia
What does space mean to you? Is it a necessity? A status symbol? A burden?
A friend and I recently went to see a documentary at the Toronto Hot Docs festival called Tiny: A Story About Living Small. The doc follows a young couple who embark on the project of building their own tiny house, measuring roughly 100 square metres, in order to secure their footing in an increasingly growing movement of downsizing living spaces in favour of simplicity.
La Guajira, Colombia
I am currently suffering from Guatemala withdrawal. The last few weeks have gone by in a flurry of exams and assignments. I find myself flipping through the pictures my classmates and I took while we were there, trying to relive the beautiful, eye-opening moments we shared. I find myself checking flights on Expedia.ca, looking for the next great experience. It’s hard to fight the urge to spread my wings and take off again.
So, although I’m still in Guatemala, thanks to scheduling posts, I can still celebrate my birthday on this blog.
It’s been 27 years since I’ve inherited this body of mine and I know for me, like the rest of us, the lessons began on day 1. I’m grateful for all the opportunities I’ve had, the lessons (I think) I’ve learned thus far and the ones I’m about to receive. It’s become my responsibility through my training in this profession to look after this body that I’m borrowing and help others look after theirs, thus we feel well enough, happy enough and strong enough to work through and learn our many lessons, and to find the answers we’ve been searching for.
On behalf of my birthday, February 23rd, have a great day!
I’ve been reading a book I recommend to all of you: The Consolations of Philosophy by Alain de Botton. This book is, in one, a Western philosophy refresher course and self-help book, outlining a guide for living as dictated to us by 6 great philosophers. One of my favourite chapters examines the life and philosophy of Greek philosopher Epicurus and distills the lessons he shared with us about finding true happiness and fulfillment in our lives, while still living modestly.
After December finals, I had my first naturopathic preceptoring experience. At CCNM, we are required to sit in on a total of 100 patient visits with a practicing naturopathic doctor. From these visits comes the kind of learning that one can only obtain through experience. This particular session, however, served to be a pretty big eye-opener for me.
Every year the naturopathic student community holds a philosophical conference at one of the accredited naturopathic medical schools in North America. For three days, naturopathic medical students and “elders” – seasoned professionals in practice for about 20 years or more – gather together in an event called (fittingly) The Gathering to share philosophical insights about the art and practice of naturopathic medicine. I have personally attended twice: my first year, in 2011, it was held at our own Canadian College of Naturopathic Medicine (CCNM) in Toronto, Canada, and this year, in 2012, it was held at the National University of Health Sciences (NUHS) in Chicago, Illinois. Both times it hasn’t failed to be less than inspirational. Here are some golden nuggets of naturopathic insight from three amazing naturopathic doctors:
This post was written in the summer of 2012. Although I hate Mayor Rob Ford, I have to hand it to the man; he must really have a strong sense of self to not get himself down over the very open disdain most Torontonians hold for him. I wonder if my ego would take that kind of repeated assault over and over again, especially that whole business with his weight-loss.
I was always kind of a chubby kid and, when society started make me conscious of the fact that this was not the way to be I decided to exercise and, essentially, begin dieting. This has led to a life where I rarely get through a day without at least having the notion weight sail through my mind’s seas. This seems kind of depressing when expressed, but it’s a concern that I work to push through, taking from it what serves to make me healthy and striving to leave behind the parts of it that lead to obsession and self-loathing. Many of us deal with similar mental struggles; young women are brought up in a society where nothing less than perfection is accepted. We have many emotional battles to fight.
Just the other day I was sitting in a Yorkville cafe, near my work, being kept company by my (closed) USMLE Step 1 review book and being kept entertained by watching passersby through the window. Yorkville is an interesting place to people-watch because everyone who struts by looks like they’re trying to find their way to a fashion runway, but got lost and then walked into Holt Renfrew, and then into Starbucks and now they’re back to looking for the runway they’re supposed to be walking down. Everyone is wearing an outfit that probably costs more than my student debt and, most of all, it seems that everyone is skinny.
That day, however, I contemplated my surroundings while sipping my coffee and I thought, while observing a fashionably, particularly stick-like woman, we’re told that that’s the body that all women should live in, regardless of profession, personality or personal health history. We live our lives obsessing over how to squish our own shapes into the size of clothes that woman wears, giving little thought to the organs, tissues and vis medicatrix naturae, or life force, that actually lies inside each of us. As I marinated in this little personal revelation, I took another sip of coffee and admitted, She looks nice, fashionable and healthy and maybe that body shape is good for her. However, there are many shapes of beautiful and I don’t think that shape is good for me.
I leaned back in my chair and felt the contentedness of having released part of a great mental burden.
Fast forward to a few days later: I give my class a speaking and writing assignment partly to kill time, to foster creativity and to improve their language skills, especially writing, which is always abysmal. I have each group generate a list of 10, random, unrelated words and then hand the list over to the other group, who must create a short story using all the words. As a class activity, it actually worked out quite well.
However, one of the groups, headed by a stronger student, who has a rather witty, yet dark sense of humour, created a story featuring, you guess it, me, their teacher. Sometimes I enjoy the limelight of teaching, other times I shy away from it, passing the buck onto the students, which actually works to their favour. Most of the time, however, I appreciate working with other people and getting to know these interesting students from a variety of different countries.
This incident, however, made me want to revert back to a student hiding in the back of the classroom. The gist of their story was that I, Talia, am invited to a party but can’t go because I need a new dress and I can’t find a beautiful dress to fit me because I’m too fat. Urgh. On the outside, I figure it must be a joke, an attempt at being funny. They just didn’t realize what a loaded word fat is for me. I laugh it off, correct some grammar mistakes and make a joke about it. I know deep down that most jokes resemble some form of truth and on the inside my emotions resemble some kind of amusement park ride, beginning at shock then surging between anger, down to hurt and even lower to despair.
It’s not the first time someone else has openly criticized my body. Each incident, while stinging at the first impact, can usually be cooled off with some deep breaths, body work and a few self-loving affirmations. However, it does deepen the contempt I have for how women are viewed in society.
From being lectured by a professional exerciser and dieter for Women’s Health Week at CCNM (she was supposed to discuss body image and the media and instead focused on the existential importance of jumping on a trampoline and limiting grains to rid the body of that “unsightly” stomach pooch) to being the recipient of comments about people who eat healthy but don’t look it, it’s no small wonder that the word weight has set up permanent neural synapses in my brain and, most likely, the brain of every other woman who has ever lived in society. Why is it our job to please those around us by conforming to the correct societal ideal of the times? Is it not enough to be fit, happy and healthy?
So while I wait for the next person to deliver a blow to my apparently fragile ego by pretending they know something about me by judging by the size of my behind, I will be sitting in a cafe, philosophizing about body image and maybe, just maybe, feeling a little bit of extra sympathy for Rob Ford.
My art is mainly inspired by nature or by places I’ve traveled to or read about. It doesn’t tend to emphasize detail and, when humans are included in the composition, they are usually faceless, depicted as chunky, cubist blocks of colour. People are rarely the main subject of my paintings. And, unlike Frida Kahlo, one of my painting idols, I have never entered the world of portrait painting, much less self-portrait painting.
When painting the facial features of other people, one must pay obsessive attention to detail. This is a skill I don’t have when it comes to painting. It’s almost as if, through painting, I can leave the burden of fussing over details behind to pursue a sense of therapeutic self-pleasing aesthetic that focuses on colour and shape, rather than the fine lines and subtleties. I tend to spend far too much time obsessing over details in real life and so I view painting as an escape from that. When painting life-like portraits, however, such an escape is impossible.
But, like Picasso, I want to become an artist-of-all-trades or, at the very least, claim experience with different subject matter. So, besides feeling that the experience would be tedious and slightly narcissistic, I decided to attempt a self-portrait.
The thing about self-portraits is that we know our own faces very well. From my teenage years through young adulthood I remember countless hours spent obsessing over my reflection: squeezing zits, plucking eyebrows, willing my nose to shrink and wondering what made my face less poetic than that of a famous actress or singer, almost like there was a secret beauty ingredient I might have been born lacking. Painting a self-portrait demands an attention to detail unlike any other mirror flirtation ever performed. From the exact shape of the mouth, to the way the cheeks are outlined, I found myself staring at parts of my reflection that I had never experienced before.
Because I’m not experienced in portrait-painting, the painting started out rough. My oil-painted face was taking on a deformed, misshapen quality, it didn’t look like me, and I found myself criticizing the painting, judging it, and then my own abilities. I then realized, painfully, that this was akin to the way I would criticize my real-life reflection. After a while, though, I found myself comforted by my outline’s familiarity and that comfort turned into a sort of visual satisfaction. This was my face: the window to the person I am who lies beneath and the signature that accompanies everything I say or do in this life. I began to make peace.
Creating art allows us lots of space for reflection. Perhaps that’s why it’s so therapeutic. As I mix colours and apply paint to canvas my mind relaxes and wanders, uninhibited, into new terrain. I find that while painting it helps to have a notebook handy because one artistic pursuit nurtures another and I find myself inspired to not only paint, but write as well. On this portrait-painting day in particular, I felt a relaxing space open up for reflection on who I am now, at 26 years of age. My reflection may have changed some, but behind the wide gaze, I could still see the smirk of that 9-year old, in the Universal Studios sweatshirt, who was imaginative, idealistic and shit-disturbing, all at once. I wonder if this 9-year-old knew that in a few years’ time she would be studying something called naturopathic medicine.
This summer has been dedicated to reviewing basic medical sciences for NPLEX and working as an English as a Second Language (ESL) teacher in Toronto. I haven’t made much time for long contemplative walks, reading literature, laying on the grass, socializing or, most of all, painting or drawing. The way I structure my day is a reflection of my disbalance, not my actual interests and priorities and, as I paint, my evolving painted self stares back at me from it’s canvas home and asks me, “is this what you wanted?”
I’m not sure. But portrait painting shows me that there is a link between borderline narcissism and self-contemplation. Maybe that’s why it’s called self-reflection.
I have a confession to make. Sometimes when I see someone I know in a public place, usually at the end of a long day, I am often guilty of lowering my head and pretending I don’t notice them, regardless of how good a hair day I’ve been having.
On Canada Day, Sunday, July 1, both temperatures and spirits were high as millions of Torontonians joined together to celebrate the biggest celebration of LGBT rights in North America: the Toronto Pride Parade!