Yearly Archives: 2007

Feeling Particularly Single

Not nec­es­sar­i­ly lone­ly, but sin­gle.

Maybe it’s because I got accus­tomed to liv­ing with some­one. Coming home to anoth­er per­son in the house. Going to bed with a warm body next to me.

My cud­dle bud­dy has decid­ed that she’s off-lim­its1. I haven’t made out with any­one, let alone had sex, in months.

Dry spells are fun­ny things.

During my last one, I was too stoned to even think about dat­ing. The one before that was more of a chal­lenge.

Being sober and sin­gle isn’t quite the way I remem­ber it.

Sometimes peo­ple tell me they want to “intro­duce” me to some­one, but I’m always antsy about hurt­ing mutu­al friends or acquain­tances.

One per­son even gave me the card of a girl they thought was “per­fect” for me, whom she met while get­ting a mort­gage approved at the bank. “Perfect in what way?”, I asked. “Every way”, she said, “Gentle, polite, petite”. For months after­ward, she would ask if I called this per­son, and give me a dis­ap­point­ed look every time I said no, like a moth­er find­ing out that her son has­n’t borne her any grand­chil­dren. I wish I could meet this girl, just to see what some­one else believes I’m look­ing for.

My friends, who are in seri­ous rela­tion­ships or mar­ried now, talk about being sin­gle as if it was akin to their hous­es burn­ing down. They’ve been in their rela­tion­ships for so long that the idea has become for­eign to them. “I’m too old to date”, they say, “Trying to find some­one new, won­der­ing if they like you, fig­ur­ing out if you’re compatible..I could­n’t start over again”.

I always laugh, and think, “Then where does that leave me?”.

  1. I hope it was­n’t because she thought I was lead­ing her on [↩]

Portraits of Gosia

Thumbnail: Gosia tilts her head 
Thumbnail: Gosia's eyes 
Thumbnail: Closeup of Gosia's eyes 
Thumbnail: Gosia's face in shadow 

A few por­traits of Gosia. She’s a first-gen­er­a­tion Canadian, her par­ents being immi­grants from Poland. One can tell she has a very European look.

Thumbnail: Gosia hams it up 
Thumbnail: Gosia on a bench 

These were tak­en with the sun com­ing from behind because Gosia was squint­ing too much oth­er­wise. I tried my flash as a fill-in to bal­ance the bright­ness of the back­ground, which helped increased sat­u­ra­tion in the fore­ground. I love the colours in these shots, they’re so dreamy.

Thumbnail: Gosia awesome abs 

Another addi­tion to my body shot series. Gosia’s a com­pet­i­tive vol­ley­ball play­er, so she has awe­some abs (not to men­tion killer curves).

Thumbnail: Gosia covered 
Thumbnail: Gosia behind a fence 
Thumbnail: Gosia's reflection in a mirror 

A lot of guys are some­what blind­ed by Gosia’s beau­ti­ful big eyes and curvy fig­ure; they’re don’t real­ize that she’s quite a strong, intel­li­gent per­son with a good head on her shoul­ders. The idea of these shots was to cov­er up part of her face, not through the fram­ing of the pic­ture, but using objects to help the view­er see past her phys­i­cal beau­ty.

Yo-Yo Tuesdays and Thursdays

It’s the same thing every Tuesday and Thursday.

I get home from work. I have some yogurt. I pow­er nap. I wake up. I eat some fruit. I take the bus to my Tai Chi class.

I’m more pro­duc­tive on the bus than at home. It forces me to sit, and removes me of all dis­trac­tions.

Some days I like to zone out. I lis­ten to music and let my mind wan­der. Lately though, I’ve been read­ing, to whit­tle down my list of pur­chased-but-not-fin­ished books:

  • Beautiful Losers* by Leonard Cohen
  • Mao: The Unknown Story* by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday
  • The Te of Piglet by Benjamin Hoff
  • Tai Chi Chuan: The Martial Side* by Michael Babin
  • Power Taiji by Michael Babin
  • Yang-Style Tai Chi by Michael Babin
  • The Taoist I Ching trans­lat­ed by Thomas Cleary
  • The Tao* by Mark Forstater

Note: Those marked with an aster­isk are ones I’ve begun read­ing.

The one I’m focus­ing on now is the Mao book (which is a tome that breaks my back when I car­ry it in a shoul­der bag) because I’m near the end of his life and it’s get­ting so good and so juicy. Nearly 10 months after Bronwen’s par­ents gave it to me last Christmas, I’m almost fin­ished.

And I get so depressed when I read it because it’s filled with sto­ries of such tragedy, cru­el­ty, and mis­for­tune. Mao proves to be such a mon­ster, with over 70 mil­lion peo­ple dead from star­va­tion, sui­cide, or tor­ture, that it fills me with an almost infi­nite sad­ness.

Then I get to my Tai Chi class, and it’s so small and inti­mate, with such a great group of peo­ple, that I feel enlight­ened. It’s such a beau­ti­ful, tan­gi­ble expres­sion of my beliefs. My class­mates are all gen­er­ous, unpre­ten­tious peo­ple. The con­tact when I’m push­ing hands, uproot­ing, force-deflect­ing — the only phys­i­cal con­tact I have in the week now — charges me, and stave’s the lone­li­ness for anoth­er day.

When class is over, I get back on the bus and read more about Mao, and hurt again.

I come home around quar­ter to ten and cook din­ner and eat and write a bit and get to sleep way too late.

It’s an emo­tion­al roller coast­er I go through twice a week.

An Evening with Krista and Shane

Thumbnail: Krista Muir and Shane Watt perform together wide

As pre­dict­ed, I left my house feel­ing ner­vous and excit­ed, and put on my Top Rated playlist to dis­tract myself. The music of Lederhosen Lucil has nev­er touched me on a deeply inti­mate lev­el, the way, say, a Leonard Cohen or Thrice song does, but it’s still remained very per­son­al. I dis­cov­ered L.L. at a time when I was feel­ing rather jad­ed from life. The music was sil­ly, fun, and con­fi­dent, so I embraced it with delight­ful hedo­nism. It lift­ed me when I was in a strange state of numb­ness and lim­bo.

Thumbnail: Krista Muir and Shane Watt get ready to perform 
Thumbnail: Shane's North Korean guitar 
Thumbnail: Lederhosen Lucil swag 

I got there at what turned out to be an hour and a half ear­ly (though it was due to a mis­take on the venue web­site), so I wan­dered the store until the show start­ed, feel­ing like a fish out of water in a tiny room filled with hand­made wom­en’s cloth­ing and jew­el­ery. Though beau­ti­ful and impres­sive­ly unique, they would­n’t let me take pic­tures of any­thing1.

As soon as I saw Krista alone, I began to hyper­ven­ti­late, which was rather unex­pect­ed (I’m still get­ting over how hilar­i­ous­ly embar­rass­ing this was). I approached her and man­aged to spit out “Hi” in a whis­per. I did­n’t know what to say, so I just asked her to sign my CD (still whis­per­ing, unable to con­trol the vol­ume of my voice). I’m sure I’ll appre­ci­ate such a reac­tion in a cou­ple years, as not many peo­ple can cause me to be so flus­tered2.

Continue read­ing “An Evening with Krista and Shane”…

  1. I’m guess­ing to pro­tect the designs of the artists [↩]
  2. Perhaps it was the strange feel­ing that Krista, who was now sud­den­ly in front of me, had so unwit­ting­ly affect­ed me, with­out ever even being aware of my exis­tence. Or per­haps I was intim­i­dat­ed. I like to con­sid­er myself a cre­ative per­son, but by no means a pro­fes­sion­al, earn­ing a liv­ing off my cre­ativ­i­ty. Krista is, how­ev­er, a born enter­tain­er. [↩]

Empty Nights, Waiting for a Realization

I’ve done the math enough to know the dan­gers of our sec­ond guess­ing
Doomed to crum­ble unless we grow, and strength­en our com­mu­ni­ca­tion

—Tool, Schism

I sup­pose I feel it most when you’re not around. Empty nights, when it’s been anoth­er day with­out con­tact.

Part of me miss­es talk­ing to you, but part of me does­n’t feel like it just yet. It’s a con­tra­dic­tion I can’t explain. Not that it mat­ters any­way.

You’re not stub­born. You’re not lazy.

You just don’t get it.