equivocality — Jeff Ngan's collection of thoughts, experiences, and projects, inspired by pretty much everything
13 Nov 10

France: Day 6, Paris

It’s been rain­ing almost non-stop across France ever since I got here, so when I woke up to a sunny day, I had to take the chance and head out to Paris. I decided to see how far I could get on foot from Gare Montparnasse, my goal being a cross­ing of the Seine.

Paris is divided into arrondiss­ments or dis­tricts, spi­ral­ing out­ward from the Louvre like a snail shell, with each one hav­ing a char­ac­ter­is­tic feel. I began my walk in the 14th arrondiss­ment, and trav­eled north.

After about four kilo­me­tres, the stiff­ness in my legs told me I should head back. But Paris is dense and full of cul­ture and his­tory at every turn; on every block over there’s some­thing that catches the eye, and you never want to turn around.

Fountain of Saint Michel

Fontaine Saint-Michel, located in the 5th arrondissment.

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12 Nov 10

Baby Scary Party

Leave it to Fédéric and Misun to host an awe­some cos­tume party, even though Halloween was over two weeks ago. They decided to have a party any­way, in a part of town where they only had two trick-or-treaters. There was quite a decent turnout (about 40 chil­dren) with­out hav­ing done any adver­tis­ing, save for a flier on their door, and I’m sure they all left tired and full from numer­ous sweets.

Of note is the wooden cas­tle in the back­yard, which Fédéric built for the kids, and which they quite appro­pri­ately adored.

Europe 2010 travel diaries

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10 Nov 10

France: Day 5, Chartres

I’ve been step­ping out of my com­fort zone. Having far too com­fort­able a life at home meant I grew com­pla­cent. I had no wants, which meant I didn’t find the same plea­sure in the sim­ple things as I used to. Here, I live with­out a cat, with­out a ukulele, with­out a reg­u­lar chance to shower, with­out locks on the bath­room doors, with­out speak­ing the language.

I needed to be reminded of how other peo­ple live, and expe­ri­ence things I never felt com­pelled to do in Ottawa. It hasn’t been easy. I mem­o­rize French phrases, and hope no one responds out of a pre­dicted path. Even then, I fall back on an English-French dic­tio­nary, and Pouvez-vous par­lez plus lent­ment, s’il vous plaît, just in case. It’s some­thing I’ve been forc­ing myself to do, and at the end of the day I’m never disappointed.

Daty croque monsieur

Various styles of croque-monsieur, a grilled ham sand­wich with cheese melted on top of but­tered pain de mie, a pack­aged French bread that’s per­fect for toast­ing. Every bak­ery and fam­ily has their own ver­sion of this.

In the back is shred­ded guyère (a medium-bodied cheese), being sliced is mont d’or (very creamy and salty, and stuck to my teeth), and already halved is Camembert (which was super rich with a smell rem­i­nis­cent of a garbage, but cer­tainly didn’t taste like it…still, I had a hard time get­ting over the smell).

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07 Nov 10

France: Day 3, Chartres

It’s been a great pace so far. No plans, no sched­ule, no goals, no stress. I didn’t want to cram a bunch of activ­i­ties on this trip; I’d much rather take it easy and enjoy myself, so I can absorb as much of the cul­ture as possible.

People would ask me if I was excited to come here, and I couldn’t say that I was, prob­a­bly because there wasn’t any­thing spe­cific I felt com­pelled to see. Sure, I’ll prob­a­bly end up vis­it­ing some of the touristy, must-see sites in Paris, but more impor­tantly, I want to live the life, to be a local for a while.

girl buying bread

The defin­i­tive image of France: a young girl dressed smartly in cha­peau and tights waves to the baker, who comes from around the counter to hold the door for her as she leaves the store. Of uncor­rupted inno­cence, sim­ple rit­u­als, and fresh bread.

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06 Nov 10

On having a Parisian accent and getting away with saying anything

  • Frédéric: Look, Akio1, at Jeff’s penis.
  • Frédéric (tap­ping on the lens of my cam­era): It’s hard, see?
  • Frédéric: Not like yours.
Akio passes out

After an after­noon of par­ty­ing, Akio doesn’t have enough energy to eat dinner.

  1. His 4-year-old son. []
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06 Nov 10

France: Arrival

Getting here was most cer­tainly the most gru­el­ing trip I’ve ever taken. From door to door, it took me 21 hours to travel almost 6000km, car­ry­ing with me nearly 90 pounds of lug­gage (which isn’t that much of a stretch from my body weight).

I was mainly focused on mak­ing it safely and with all my stuff, so tak­ing pho­tos wasn’t a pri­or­ity. Traveling alone is cer­tainly a lot more dif­fi­cult than with a com­pan­ion, because you can’t leave suit­cases with some­one and do some­thing quick like walk down a street to find a sign, or go to the bathroom.

talking to a pigeon

Giving a pigeon a stern talking-to. Birds are brave here.

At Gare Montparnasse.

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30 Oct 10

To begin again

It’s snow­ing. The first of the sea­son, and it hasn’t stopped for four hours.

Finally.

I have so many things to write about, but this is the only thing on my mind right now.

snow

The view out the back.

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Nothing fills me with hope the way snow does. I write about this every year. If there were ever a Wikipedia entry about me that said love, depres­sion, and win­ter, were all themes in my work, it’d be right.

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26 Oct 10

Protected: threw away the cards

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25 Oct 10

a change of seasons

We’re doing this a lit­tle dif­fer­ently tonight.

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I decided that I don’t spend enough time in my liv­ing room. I’m always at the com­puter in the cor­ner of the bed­room. It’s my crawl­space, my cozy nook, thanks to the dark­ness and a decent set of speak­ers. Then I go to sleep on the couch in the liv­ing room.

But I used to spend nights writ­ing in this liv­ing room. Usually on the ground with my back to a patch of wall between the win­dow (open, of course) and the back door. Or with a mug of tea at the din­ing table. Nights full of warmth, and emo­tion, and clar­ity. I miss that. Back when I could still write about love. Back when I had love to write about.

Violet

But I’m here now in my blan­kets with my lap­top. On the TV is The Brown Bunny in all it’s grainy old-school glory, and Vincent Gallo, that sexy moth­er­fucker. I wish I could be as cocky. The sec­ond time through the movie you real­ize that all the girls are named after flowers.

kiss

Sunday night feels like it’s been alter­nat­ing between snow and rain all week­end. As per tra­di­tion, I’m see­ing how long I can go with­out turn­ing on the fur­nace before it gets too cold. I’ve never minded the chill; it only makes blan­kets and hood­ies all the more com­fort­able. My cat tends to be a lot more cud­dlier too, and aggres­sive even, in where she plants her­self next to me.

I’ve been wait­ing for the snow to come. Even with the has­sle and the mess and the bit­ing cold, it’s still worth it to wake up to a white world.

bodies

 

I’ve been drawn to pho­tog­ra­phy again. With video, an impor­tant moment can be eas­ily lost, but with pho­tog­ra­phy the viewer has no choice but to con­front the sin­gle frame pre­sented to them. There’s also some­thing about a lack of con­text. A pho­to­graph is more con­ducive to let­ting an audi­ence won­der what has hap­pened to lead up to the image, and what hap­pened after.

The prob­lem is that I don’t have any­thing to pho­to­graph any­more. I feel so unin­spired. I never go out. Sometimes I won­der if I’m get­ting more and more anti-social. I work from home for four days a week now. Every time I think I should pick up the phone and call some­one to catch up, I never do.

I’m start­ing to feel less and less guilty about it. I can’t tell if I’m get­ting com­fort­able, or just lazy.

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21 Oct 10

House Show II

I’m still catch­ing my breath from the awe­some­ness that was the sec­ond House Show. So much plan­ning, prepa­ra­tion, and prac­tice went into one night that I felt like I’d given birth when it was over; I didn’t know how to feel, or what to think.

Darren came up the day before to hang out, and along with Shane, Blais (his son), and Chris, stayed until Sunday. After the show we stayed up talk­ing, pick­ing Shane’s brain about his com­po­si­tion process and influ­ences. Everything went bet­ter than I could have planned, and I’m thank­ful that so many of my friends were there to share the expe­ri­ence with me.

cupcakes

Meet the cupcakes (from left to right):

Black and White (Belgian dark choco­late cake with vanilla frost­ing and choco­late sprin­kles), straw­berry (pure straw­berry cake with sweet cream cheese frost­ing and red sugar flower on top), hazel­nut choco­late (hazelnut-chocolate cake with Belgian dark choco­late frost­ing dec­o­rated with a toasted hazel­nut on top), vanilla (vanilla cake and frost­ing, flavoured with Madagascar bour­bon vanilla with sprin­kles), and key lime pie (lime-infused cake and cream cheese frost­ing with lime zest).

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11 Oct 10

skies they opened up for us

It’s been a good week­end, full of res­o­lu­tion and epipha­nies and hugs and delec­table food and won­der­ful surprises.

I’m run­ning on autopi­lot again. Sleeping well and feel­ing good. It still hasn’t sunk in that I’ll be in France in less than a month. There are so many projects I’ve put off until I get back.

kids on stairs

 

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07 Oct 10

go on

I had a fever dream one night. When I woke up, every­thing was clear. I finally snapped back to real­ity. Thank fuck.

Hitting rock bot­tom was the only way for me to gain some per­spec­tive. When you’re at the edge, you tend to get a bet­ter look at your­self. Now my recov­ery is as mete­oric as my fall. To be hon­est, I don’t know if I’m any stronger or bet­ter for it. If I ever end up in the same sit­u­a­tion again one day, will I be able to han­dle it bet­ter? For some rea­son, I don’t think so. All I know is that I held on, I’m strong enough to go on, and I had to fig­ure it out by myself.

Ryan at two

cheese

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My music has been a mix of stuff lately, gen­er­ally warm and chill, and most of it being too per­sonal for me to post here. Or maybe I’m just being greedy. By a stroke of luck, I found this song after two years of scour­ing every pos­si­ble music venue (I even had my card out, ready to buy it on iTunes, but they aren’t pop­u­lar enough to be on there). I almost cried when I heard it for the first time at 320kbps.

I’m lean­ing towards the pur­chase of a clas­si­cal gui­tar (as opposed to a steel-string one). I’m sure it’s because Cohen always used a nylon-stringed gui­tar in his early albums, and this has influ­enced my palate to pre­fer a rounder, mel­low sound. Even though this deci­sion will be in the far future, I can’t help but lis­ten to as many clas­si­cal gui­tarists as pos­si­ble to see what kind of tone they can muster from their strings. Unfortunately, it’s really rare to find con­tem­po­rary music (the only genre I’m inter­ested in play­ing) being per­formed on a clas­si­cal gui­tar, unless it’s a gim­mick tune like the theme for Super Mario Bros.

The weather is turn­ing lovely the only way Autumn can, as crisp as it is fleeting.

I have so many ideas going through my head, and I wish I could fol­low through on all of them. Or give up writing/photography/cinematography/web design/music and focus on one at a time. But I always get bored of a medium, or feel the need express myself with a par­tic­u­lar one because it may bet­ter lend itself to being a voice in a cer­tain situation.

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30 Sep 10

bokeh

Went for a walk in the mar­ket today.

Saw a yellow-haired home­less man almost get run over as he absent-mindedly tried to cross the street against traf­fic. When the dri­ver gave him an extended honk, he took a slow drag from his cig­a­rette as he saun­tered back to the side­walk. There was no shame on his face, no embar­rass­ment, no worry. He couldn’t have cared less. It was as if you could take noth­ing more from him.

bokeh

 

I’ve always loved people-watching, and today was no excep­tion. A lit­tle game I play with myself to fig­ure out someone’s tastes and habits through their man­ner­isms. There were peo­ple on every cor­ner, and so much won­der held in the mys­tery of every one of them. It’s impos­si­ble not to feel hope at this realization.

I’m always after that moment, when I’m caught between the focus and the enig­matic blur, lost to the colours and the wind on my skin, and try­ing to make it last a lifetime.

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27 Sep 10

House Show II: Invitation

Owing to the suc­cess of last year’s house show, I’ve invited both Shane Watt and Jesse Dangerously to come and per­form again next month. Not only will there be awe­some music and an assort­ment of mini-cupcakes hosted in my liv­ing room, it’ll also be Jesse’s birth­day party.

This will be a col­lab­o­ra­tion across Eastern Canada, as Shane will be com­ing from Montreal (with a poten­tial secret guest), and Rosie will be trav­el­ing from Halifax on man­dolin to join Audra, Nic (also com­ing from Montreal, as Rockefort F. Loopfrog, the beat­maker), and I as part of the Dangerson Famile. However, I don’t think Dolly will be mak­ing an appear­ance because the sheer num­ber of peo­ple in the house last time really freaked her out.

second house show flier

I had a lot of fun mak­ing this flyer, fea­tur­ing Mr. Cupcake. The great thing about Avenir is that it sup­ports so many vari­a­tions of the type­face, which lets you make movie and con­cert posters in the clas­sic style of a full-justified col­umn of information.

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22 Sep 10

fall and falling

Darren and I crashed at the same time. It’s like we’re going through this together. I wish I was back in T.O. with him and Chris, cause some of the best con­ver­sa­tions of the year hap­pened in that car. We’re all in the same place, all young men on the mend.

I’m very pleased to say that Darren’s now the owner of a wild cherry sun­burst Seagull Entourage Mini Jumbo (but with a pick-guard and cut­away). And I’m totally jeal­ous, as I’ve been drool­ing over pic­tures of gui­tar bind­ings and rosettes myself lately. I had bor­rowed Jesse’s ginor­mous1 gui­tar for a bit, and I felt like I was pinned under a piece of fur­ni­ture every time I tried play­ing it. It totally turned me off gui­tars in gen­eral, but as I was walk­ing through the Ottawa Folklore Centre today, I saw a series of much smaller acoustics. I had to keep walk­ing. The last thing I can afford is another hobby and another toy.

moon

Got this shot through the lens of my tele­scope, which is why you can see the cir­cu­lar out­line of the eye­piece. Big enough to make out the geo­graph­i­cal fea­tures like the Mare Insularum splotch on the top left. Taken when still bright out, but the moon shone bright through the daylight.

I had a decent night of sleep for the first time in far too long, maybe because I’ve writ­ten more in the last week than in the three months before that. Strange how clear and calm­ing and inspir­ing it is to be rested. I still don’t know what I’m feel­ing though. It’s like I just don’t know what to think anymore.

A ridicu­lous amount of Starcraft II has been played. John and I have even been play­ing against each other, which is strange for us because nei­ther per­son wants to beat the other (out of sports­man­ship), but nei­ther wants to lose either (out of fool­ish pride). I was far more dom­i­nant in Warcraft 3 because it’s micro dri­ven so we never did 1v1, but Starcraft is macro dri­ven, which John is much bet­ter at. He’s proven him­self to be a very wor­thy oppo­nent with sev­eral good games on me. I’m so glad Blizzard doesn’t record the num­ber of hours played in a person’s pro­file now.

I want to be in France in this sea­son. My neigh­bours just came back from Paris and told me it was really foggy. I wouldn’t mind. Really. I’d love to walk down the stony path of rue Saint Vincent — the set­ting of one of my favourite Yves Montand songs — when it’s cov­ered by a hazy mist and I’m sport­ing a cozy sweater.

I spend 21 hours of the day in my room, and I’m never bored. I don’t go out of the house for days at at time. I have nei­ther the rea­son nor the desire to. I think I han­dle being alone too well.

  1. This word totally didn’t get picked up by spell-check, which means the Firefox dic­tio­nary is pretty decent. []
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