The disabling effects of being watched:

Anxiety that comes from being watched.

Usually procured by a person in a role of superiority. Quite often this sense of disabling happens when a person is attempting to do something that they may not be entirely comfortable with or new-to. I’ve experience this is a classroom setting, playing music, snowboarding, capturing images; and most recently while learning ballroom dancing- the east coast swing to be exact.



http://assets.families.com/Encyclopedias/sjpc_04_img1225.jpg

This Monday night marked Miss Amy and I’s second class. Taking a dance class being something we have wanted to do for quite some time, now just seemed to be the right time. That and the fact that we are feeling lost like empty bottles at sea in our new surroundings of Thunder Bay. Before we came here we knew it would be different, we knew it would be a shift and we knew that we would be challenged and motivated to join into more community activities than we had in Edmonton.

One of my goals, to take piano lessons has still not come to fruition although I have joined the Alpine Club of Canada to gain experience in the world of rock climbing.

Back to anxiety: Last week only Carmella was present to teach us our first ‘basic’ steps. The resemblance of Carmella to Maya at Padmanadi is uncanny, it’s as though C is the older sister. This week Carmella’s partner, Arman, was also present. Last week Amy and I glided through the first sets of steps, the basic, the butterfly hands, the side turn and so on. This week under the watchful gaze of Arman I had bursts of immobility.

I felt like a child learning to hammer a nail into a board, Okay the child is me, and still to this day I can’t really do anything as well if my father is present and watching me do it… anything really.

Hmm, so this all goes back to my father. And I thought I had nothing interesting to write today. The psyche is divulging secrets of my past as I write.

This is the polish hall, in which we dance…

Since these experiences I have described of the past few days, dancing and the film festival, I thought that including images of places and spaces would be helpful to contextualize the experiences of the ‘polish hall’ and the film festival at the ‘big fin hall’ on our temporal bodies.

Polish Hall - 818 Spring Street
















http://www.thunderbay.ca/index.cfm?fuse=html&pg=2956


Finnish Labour Temple Historic photo


http://www.hoito.ca/article/page-title-4-6.asp

Both of these buildings are of considerable age, in some form of disrepair and have played inportant roles in the building of and maintaining community throughout Thunder Bay's history. Although I don't know anything more than that which I observe.

A