Posts in category "Daily Life"

a change of seasons

We’re doing this a lit­tle dif­fer­ent­ly tonight.

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.

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).

Continue read­ing “House Show II”…

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

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.

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.