Yearly Archives: 2009

Chip Off The Old Block

I don’t know what’s worth fight­ing for
Or why I have to scream
I don’t know why I insti­gate
And say what I don’t mean
I don’t know how I got this way
I’ll nev­er be alright
So I’m break­ing the habit
I’m break­ing the habit tonight

—Linkin Park, Breaking The Habit

Studies have shown that kids with divorced par­ents are much more like­ly to end up being divorced them­selves. As role mod­els, we take the way their par­ents treat each oth­er and use this as a mod­el for our own rela­tion­ships. And even­tu­al­ly, our kids end up treat­ing their kids the same way because that’s all they know1.

I used to take my girl­friends for grant­ed. It could have been a way for me to dis­tance myself to pre­vent get­ting hurt (as ther­a­py has shown), or it may have just been what I thought rela­tion­ships were like.

I can recall my par­ents doing the same thing to each oth­er. They did­n’t mar­ry out of love, they mar­ried because it was the thing to do when you reached a cer­tain age. Eventually, they mere­ly inhab­it­ed the same house, not even sleep­ing in the same bed or room.

It’s a cycle, a trap. But that’s not an excuse for me.

I refuse to be like them. I refuse to end up like they did. I’m going to do my best to change that about myself.

And I will break the cycle.

  1. At least, that’s the excuse my mom uses. []

Small Town Photo Trip

Field 2

Tina and I head­ed to a cou­ple of small towns around Ottawa. She had her Nikon and I was armed with my new Canon 5D Mark II, which is a full frame cam­era and gives me such won­der­ful­ly wide angles. You can see her shots at her flickr set. They give me great ideas on how I can look at things from anoth­er per­spec­tive because they’re so dif­fer­ent from mine, approach­ing shots from clos­er ranges and com­pos­ing with more diag­o­nal angles.

Field 1

This is by far my favourite shot (above), and I’ll prob­a­bly get a large print of it when I have the mon­ey. There’s a series of acrylic paint­ings by Ken Vincent at the Koyman Galleries in Ottawa, and I’ve always want­ed this one in par­tic­u­lar because the colours and the moody clouds speak of pure emo­tion to me, and I nev­er believed I was capa­ble of cap­tur­ing such moments with my last cam­era1. The price — $2300 for a 28“x61” paint­ing — had always held me back, but now I’m con­fi­dent I can get that elu­sive look I’ve been try­ing to cap­ture, myself.

Continue read­ing “Small Town Photo Trip”…

  1. A Canon Digital Rebel Xt []

Unwitting Puppet

If it has­n’t been painful­ly obvi­ous, I’ve fall­en off the wag­on. I’ve been think­ing about her again.

But it isn’t my fault.

You see, she came by my work and gave me a box of home­made short­bread cook­ies in a cute lit­tle box (as well as some for my oth­er co-work­ers). I would nor­mal­ly say that it’s a nice ges­ture, but in this case, it was a cru­el and painful reminder of what I had lost. But that pain sub­sided as I ate them (admit­ted­ly, in one sit­ting) and I decid­ed to for­give her for that one. It’s hard to stay angry when the sug­ar and but­ter hits your brain.

Then she walked by at a con­cert, and squeezed my arm as she was pass­ing by. I did­n’t even know she was there until it hap­pened. Then she did it again.

This whole time, I’ve been try­ing to get over things by stay­ing away, and I was doing pret­ty well, until the touch1 of her hand fanned the ash­es of pas­sion that were left smol­der­ing in my chest, revers­ing sev­er­al weeks of emo­tion­al recov­ery.

I told my friends I knew I was being self­ish, because I’m the weak­er one for not being able to han­dle it when she’s dat­ing some­one else2. But they tell me it’s not self­ish, it’s self preser­va­tion. That I’m just tak­ing care of myself, and she’s the one being self­ish and incon­sid­er­ate, because she’s not respect­ing my wish­es to keep a dis­tance. I’ve since stopped feel­ing guilty for stay­ing away.

Still, I’m left with this won­der­ing. What do her actions mean? What is she try­ing to com­mu­ni­cate? What does she want?

I can only guess that she wants to remain friends, but there’s this stu­pid hope in the back of my mind that it meant some­thing more. Maybe it’s a habit; I lived with that hope for more than a year as we fell into a rela­tion­ship at arms length.

I’ve con­sid­ered going back to her and ask­ing for some clo­sure — some real clo­sure — but I don’t think even she can explain her actions at this point. And if she could, her answer would prob­a­bly be the same as it’s always been.

But I real­ly don’t know for sure because she’s cho­sen not to stay away, against my wish­es, and my heart feels like it’s hang­ing by a thread. I doubt she’s doing it on pur­pose, but yet again, she gets to fig­ure things out at the expense of my emo­tion­al sta­bil­i­ty. After all, it’s hard me to move on when mixed sig­nals are hold­ing me back, like an open, gap­ing wound con­stant­ly being picked.

  1. This is the same sort of caress that can melt one’s resolve when com­ing from a per­son for whom one has a weak­ness. Humbert Humbert refers to this at the end of Lolita when he says to her, “Don’t touch me. I’ll die if you touch me.” []
  2. Then again, at least I know enough to stay away, instead of stalk­ing and going psy­cho. []

People Being Nice To Me

Tao Te Ching cover

Louise gave me a gor­geous copy of the Tao Te Ching. It’s trans­lat­ed by James Legge, with clas­sic Chinese art from the Cleveland Museum of Art. What’s espe­cial­ly cool is that the fonts used for the titles is Avenir, which is the same font I used for my sec­ond Tao tat­too.

Tao Te Ching page 1

It’s per­fect because I feel like I’ve strayed from the path late­ly. It’s been a few weeks since I picked up the book and read a few vers­es.

Tao Te Ching page 2

I real­ly like the fact that many of the pages have no vers­es, and only art­work. It’s nice enough that I’ll prob­a­bly keep it out on my cof­fee table, instead of in my book­shelf hid­den in a clos­et1.

Bamboo bookmark

She also gave me this bam­boo book­mark, with a Confucian say­ing on it. I find it fun­ny because Confucianism oppos­es Taoism, though they both have very good ideas.

Continue read­ing “People Being Nice To Me”…

  1. Not that I don’t like to dis­play books, I just pre­fer to keep a neat house. []