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the tide you swim against will carry you back home

3

How quickly my world fell apart. How sud­denly things have changed, never to be the same again. No one blames me for being unable to cope when so much has hap­pened all at once.

When diag­nos­ing the sever­ity of your mood, the pro­fes­sion­als always ask if you have a plan. Even the two cops who show up at your door at mid­night cause your friends fear the worst will pose the ques­tion. I guess a plan is the sign that you’re in imme­di­ate dan­ger, and I had three.

It means I get to be self­ish now. I get to do what I need to sur­vive. I get to think of myself for once in my life.

Even if my friends have never been through this, even if they don’t under­stand, they still care, and they prove it to me with every lin­ger­ing hug, every meal they leave me, every call to ask how I’m feel­ing, every mes­sage left to let them know if there’s any­thing they can do, every reminder that they don’t want to lose me spo­ken through tears from those I’ve never seen cry.

I used to have noth­ing but guilt for wor­ry­ing them, but now I under­stand that guilt is the last thing they want me to feel. They only want me to be okay. They’ve done so much to make me believe this, and that’s exactly what I need right now.

Date  May 17, 2012
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Categories  Daily Life

booster draft

0

Today, I got to intro­duce some very good friends to each other. Everyone got along famously, although it couldn’t have gone any other way with these guys.

It was the first booster draft for three of us. I was mas­sa­cred in every game, and didn’t have any less fun los­ing to such great sports.

Magic: The Gathering booster draft

Two Innistrad and two Dark Ascension. Oh what glit­ter­ing golden sym­bols lie beneath these wrappers.

Unfortunately, noth­ing inter­ested me when we were pick­ing out rares1, so I got noth­ing for the deck I’m cur­rently build­ing, and no direc­tion for a sec­ond deck. But as Aaron said, even if you lose, it’s cheaper than a night of poker. Sometimes you lose it on the river, some­times you draw 13 con­sec­u­tive lands, and some­times you OH GOD WHY ARE MY CREATURES DEAD ARGHGHHGHGH LETS PLAY AGAIN.

  1. And there wasn’t a sin­gle green rare — exactly what I was look­ing for — out of 17 rares. I have no idea what the chances are on that, but I know they’re not big. [↑]
Date  March 11, 2012
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Categories  Daily Life Photos

sine wave

2

It’s per­pet­u­ally night in my lit­tle nest. A gui­tar is never more than an arms length away, and two cats are always will­ing to curl up against my body under the sheets (though never together); some days it feels like these are the only things I need in the world. Perhaps I’m lit­tle too com­fort­able here, where I can watch the snow fall out the win­dow, and sel­dom have to ven­ture out of my com­fort zone.

I’m con­stantly start­ing over. Throwing away a page so I can have a blank can­vas. Losing another friend to adult­hood, then find­ing new ones in the most unex­pected places. Riding the oscil­la­tions of a sine wave.

The only thing that’s con­stant is how much Byron is grow­ing, his paws and tail hav­ing sur­passed Dolly’s in girth many months ago, and I can’t wait to see how big he’s going to get once he’s fully into adult­hood. I relate to my friends only when one of the cats is afflicted with acne or her­pes or an upper res­pi­ra­tory infec­tion, and I have to play mother to a kitty who can’t fight the sick­ness by them­selves. Dolly has been espe­cially sen­si­tive lately, and needs a lot more atten­tion and affec­tion, still jeal­ous of the new kit­ten in the house.

cats sleeping butt to butt

Butt to butt.

Lisa keeps me sane nowa­days, a role she’s par­tially taken over from John ever since he became a dad. She’s the voice of female rea­son in my life, the only excuse I use to watch great movies now, and the one who talks me down from drunken e-mails to ex-girlfriends. But some­times I need more than half a Lisa and half a John, cause not every­thing can be solved by a stolen con­ver­sa­tion or bury­ing your face in a cat’s belly.

I’m learn­ing that life goes on, whether you’re ready or not. You can only con­trol so much. This real­iza­tion is the rea­son I don’t worry about the future any­more, even when it feels like I should be worried.

I’ve also dis­cov­ered that my writer’s block hasn’t been due to a lack of things to talk about, but the fact that noth­ing I write is sat­is­fy­ing any­more. I’ve lost my rea­son. The only thing I’ve fallen in love with lately has been my set of extra-light chrome flat­wound strings, cause they have such a crisp sound off the nail, but main­tain a warm, aus­tere overtone.

I used to go to bed and dream, but nowa­days, my mind is empty. I don’t know what to make of it all any­more. Can’t fig­ure out if I’m stand­ing on a crest or trough.

Date  February 13, 2012
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Categories  Daily Life Photos

chapters

1

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I’m writ­ing this over break­fast — a sim­ple flax bagel with cream cheese and hon­eyed tea — some­thing I haven’t done since back in the day. How weird is it that I don’t write any­more. At this point, I can’t tell if it’s a shift in inter­ests, or just a lack of need.

I lose track of the days cause I don’t sleep reg­u­lar hours. Or talk to John. Or play games. I can’t under­stand where the time is going. I won­der if life will ever slow down again, or if this is it, this is the rea­son old peo­ple whine about how quickly the years have passed and how some small food item used to cost some small amount.

man holding baby

This is how I want to be woken up every day.

I haven’t had a chance to recharge my bat­ter­ies in as long as I can remem­ber. The Christmas hol­i­days will be nice, when I’ll actu­ally be tak­ing the time off to her­mi­tize and relax, when I won’t have another video to edit, sub­ject to write, song to learn, or friend to visit. I may even treat myself to Portal 2.

boy playing with Lego

 

The Fall has started like no other. The air is clear and the sun is out, but it’s start­ing to get nippy at night. Every morn­ing I wake up with the pave­ment dark from the dew, and soon I’ll be scrap­ing ice off the car, instead of wip­ing the con­den­sa­tion from the windows.

It’s still not cool enough to leave the win­dows open all day, but the antic­i­pa­tion is enough. There’s some­thing com­fort­ing about a pre­dictable cycle, know­ing that snow will fall and melt, that things will die and grow.

mother holding baby

 

I can finally see the grand scheme, the chap­ters in the book we’re con­stantly writ­ing, where an end­ing means a begin­ning is on the next page.

In a way, it feels like I’m finally here, except I don’t know where here is, I just know it’s exactly where I want to be.

Date  September 29, 2011
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Categories  Daily Life Photos

You're my big bear

1

and that means you’d get a big bear hug the next time I see you, but they say you’ve shat­tered your rib cage, lost a pile of teeth, and bro­ken every bone on the right side of your body, save the arm.

I’ve been there man. You know that. That’s why you know I’ll never judge you for what hap­pened. You told me we could always talk cause you were once on the edge of the same blade, so you should have known the same, but you didn’t pick up when he said maybe there was a bet­ter chance you’d lis­ten to me. All I could do was sit there, try­ing to keep calm, but expect­ing the next call to be about a body.

I should be angry. Not cause you didn’t call me to say good­bye before you took off, but because you hurt your­self and you’re my brother, and that means you hurt my family.

I can’t stay mad cause you’re con­scious now, your vitals are sta­ble, there’s no brain dam­age, and relief has sur­passed anger. They say it’s mainly injuries to the bones and that bones heal, long as it may take.

Will I rec­og­nize you the next time I see you? Will I cry? Will you ever under­stand how scared I was? I can’t call cause the nurse needs to be by your side, and I can’t visit yet cause only imme­di­ate fam­ily are allowed for now. Otherwise, I’d be in a car, dri­ving down there with a case of Blue ready for you when you’re out.

I don’t want to worry any­more. I want to see with my own eyes that you’re okay. I want you drunk at my wed­ding with your cap on back­wards, scream­ing your ass off when I walk down the aisle. I want you at every New Year’s party, cause you’re one of the only rea­sons I go any­more. I want you to teach my kids how put some­one in a proper choke-hold cause they should know how to take care of them­selves, and you’re smart in all the ways I’m not.

We all need you as much as I do. That’s why you’re still alive, and that’s what I’m going to make you under­stand one day.

Date  August 29, 2011
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Categories  Random

small world

2

The drive to Toronto is get­ting eas­ier. It’s my only chance to really lis­ten to albums nowa­days1, not to men­tion the com­fort of see­ing famil­iar towns on the way, like the names of sub­way stops you can’t help but mem­o­rize as a child on the way home from school. And in a way, so many years later, Toronto still feels like home. Getting there is a jour­ney, but the peo­ple always make it worth it.

My patience tends to wear out about a quar­ter way in, when it becomes hard to main­tain a rea­son­able speed. It’s a test of whether I can drive safely to see how far I’ve grown as a person.

I fail every time.

Toronto view

The view from Alex’s down­town apart­ment. You can eas­ily tell Yonge Street apart from how brightly it’s lit.

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  1. Editors in both direc­tions this time, cause any­thing I lis­ten to nowa­days is Antje rec­om­mended. [↑]
Date  August 22, 2011
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Categories  Daily Life Photos

Protected: round my hometown memories are fresh

1

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Date  July 1, 2011
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Categories  Daily Life Photos

friendship cycles

4

I haven’t talked to John since he got mar­ried, which was almost a month ago. This is an inor­di­nately long time, con­sid­er­ing the fact that he used to call me almost every other day. I don’t blame him cause I know he just got back from his hon­ey­moon, moved into a new house, and is catch­ing up on work. I’ve never been hap­pier for him, but that still leaves me long­ing for the com­fort of the only per­son I say so much to. He was my only con­sis­tent source of inter­ac­tion with the out­side world.

cutting the wedding cake

Head table, bitches.

Alayna just had her 20 week ultra­sound, and they’re going to have a boy. When the baby’s born, I’ll have even less of him.

It’s not like I’ve given up on John, but I have to face the fact that he’s in a very dif­fer­ent place now, and needs to focus on his fam­ily. That means I need to give him space; it’s exactly what he would do for me if our sit­u­a­tions were reversed1. Considering the fact that the rela­tion­ship, mar­riage, baby, and house weren’t on the hori­zon only half a year ago, it’s a very sud­den change for me.

I’ve learned that all rela­tion­ships — roman­tic or not — have unique begin­nings and end­ings. Some are short-term and run their course quickly, oth­ers are long-term and last until pass­ing, and they can all come and go at any point in our lives.

It makes me won­der when I’ll meet another friend I can spend time with the way I can with John. Someone I can call up and hang out with spon­ta­neously, with­out feel­ing like I need to keep them enter­tained. Someone I can have on the phone with­out say­ing any­thing, and for whom I can have an excuse to cook. Someone around whom I can let my guard down, which is prob­a­bly the most dif­fi­cult thing for me to do when it comes to being social. There have been a few peo­ple like that through the years, but things fall apart, and that’s why I’m left here, miss­ing the com­fort of a close friend.

  1. Although I’m sure it’d be eas­ier for him cause I’m more depen­dent, even though I tend to be the one in con­trol in our friend­ship. [↑]
Date  May 3, 2011
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Categories  Thoughts

Protected: thanks and appreciation

2

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Date  September 13, 2010
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Categories  Random

August ending

0

August passed me by.

My Tai Chi stu­dio closed at the begin­ning of the month due to the new provin­cial tax pol­icy. I was going to look for another stu­dio, but I haven’t had a chance. Instead, I took up singing lessons. It didn’t help that Starcraft 2 came out, and the fact that most of my friends pur­chased it too so there’s always at least one per­son online and ready to play with me.

greeting Audra

 

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Date  September 11, 2010
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Categories  Daily Life Photos Video

Friends from France

0

Frédéric and Misun were briefly in Canada. They went on a short cruise with Misun’s par­ents and made a quick stop in Ottawa so nat­u­rally I took the chance to see them. It was a lovely evening for a bar­be­cue and eat­ing out in the sun.

It’s so inter­est­ing to hear about every­thing they’re doing with their lit­tle art gallery stu­dio, adding to my excite­ment of vis­it­ing them in a few months.

Greetings

Seeing the new baby. Mommy barely looks like she was preg­nant, and Frédéric looks like he’s been eat­ing well in France.

watching Miric

Miric tests out the paper air­plane launcher I bought the boys. It was one of the few non-violent toys I could find in Toys R Us.

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Date  August 4, 2010
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Categories  Daily Life Photos

Visiting Pita

0

Pita is soon mov­ing to the west coast of Canada, so I went to visit him in Montreal on the week­end. We lived together in res­i­dence in uni­ver­sity and for two years in an apart­ment down­town, but hadn’t seen each other in years. I’m prob­a­bly the only per­son to still think of him as Pita, the nick­name given to him from the first week of res­i­dence. There were two pairs of room­mates named Jeff and Peter, so every­one decided that one pair should have nick­names to make the dis­tinc­tion, and that ended up being us.

Pita's house

He’s mov­ing out in two days, so his house is a jum­ble of packed boxes and mis­cel­la­neous items.

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Date  July 19, 2010
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Categories  Daily Life Photos

Audra's 34th

6

For Audra’s birth­day we headed to the Savana Cafe, with some choco­late ice cream cake at the William’s res­i­dence after leav­ing the very rude ser­vice we were given.

I also got to meet Jesse’s dad, Jim. He reminds me very much of his son in terms of their intel­lect and inter­ests, and I found it quite novel to talk to an older ver­sion of Jesse with a soft voice and grey facial hair.

Dinner table

Across the table is Jesse, Caitlyn, Ariel, Ira, and Jairus. Jesse’s dad to my right.

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Date  May 19, 2010
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Categories  Daily Life Photos

sunshine on road trips

6

The three of us, plus boy.

Like old times — camp­ing, week­ends at the farm, study­ing in the comp sci lounge — with a twist.

One of us is expect­ing, one of us just bought a house, and one of us has been think­ing about kids of his own some day.

Jeff with Ryan

One of Trolley’s shots.

Date  April 30, 2010
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Categories  Daily Life Photos

E-mails that make me feel good

2

Hey Jeff!

Before I send out a big­ger email (yes, I am plan­ning this event around you again :) , how about Friday April 30th for the fon­due night?
Are you free?

Have an amaz­ing time tom­mor­row pho­tograph­ing! Sergey and I are going back to the Gatineaus just for the night tom­mor­row — I am not expect­ing the same desert-like con­di­tions in my tent :)

And for very obvi­ous reasons.

Date  April 25, 2010
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Categories  Random
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