Yearly Archives: 2007

Chasing Amy

And while I was falling for you I put a ceil­ing on that, because you were a guy. Until I remem­bered why I opened the door to women in the first place: to not lim­it the like­li­hood of find­ing that one per­son who’d com­ple­ment me so com­plete­ly. So here we are. I was thor­ough when I looked for you. And I feel jus­ti­fied lying in your arms, ’cause I got here on my own terms, and I have no ques­tion there was some place I did­n’t look.

I sup­pose I would have enjoyed Chasing Amy more if the dia­logue had been more believ­able, but I could­n’t buy it.

We don’t live in a Dawson’s Creek world where every­one’s a psy­chol­o­gist, com­plete­ly in tune with their emo­tions and the emo­tions of oth­ers.

People aren’t con­fronta­tion­al in real life either. They don’t say what they mean or mean what they say.

And when you’re try­ing to tell the girl that you’re in love with her, it does­n’t come out as some flow­ery, roman­tic verse, it comes out in jum­bles. You’re trip­ping over your own words cause it’s the girl.

Maybe I was just hop­ing for a love sto­ry that worked out. I would have giv­en in to the sus­pen­sion of dis­be­lief that peo­ple actu­al­ly talk like that, had there been a hap­py end­ing.

This Was Written On A Saturday Night

I’m most pro­duc­tive on Saturday nights. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because I’ve been doing noth­ing all day and I’m feel­ing guilty. I’ve nev­er been one to work on Saturday after­noons, which were made for relax­ation.

The nights are dif­fer­ent though. It’s when I can con­cen­trate on my writ­ing. I’m tired. My guard is down.

The week comes pour­ing out.

This was written from the heart

With my back against the wall, I sit on the ground next to my back door, open­ing it to let the breeze drift in. Sometimes I turn my head to look out­side and smell the night air. It’s cool, no mat­ter the time of year. The street lamps are soft, and they bathe my back porch in warm light.

One can’t help but feel influ­enced by such seren­i­ty.

This was written out of order

I’ve become a slave to this blog. After some self-eval­u­a­tion, I’ve come to real­ize that every­thing is inspired but forced. Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, no more.

It’s time to start writ­ing when I want.

Becoming One With The Tao

After 26 years, I’ve real­ized that I’m a Taoist.

I dab­bled in Existentialism (after read­ing Huis Clos, revis­it­ing it when read­ing Thus Spoke Zarathustra), athe­ism (when I was dat­ing an Anglican), agnos­ti­cism (after we broke up), Nihilism (while read­ing sev­er­al books of Russian Romantic lit­er­a­ture), Buddhism (in ear­ly uni­ver­si­ty), and Christianity (through­out my life). None of it ever felt com­plete.

In 2003, I hap­pened to come across a few vers­es of the Tao Te Ching. The con­cepts were dif­fi­cult to grasp at first1. Eventually, with the guid­ance of some Chinese elders, I came to a sol­id foun­da­tion of under­stand­ing, then approached it slow­ly and care­ful­ly. I had put so much hope in find­ing a sys­tem of beliefs in the past, that I was scared of hur­ried­ly align­ing myself with the first one that bared a pass­ing resem­blance to my own.

More specif­i­cal­ly, I’m a philo­soph­i­cal Taoist. I don’t believe in any poly­the­is­tic aspects of the reli­gious side, the div­ina­tion of the I Ching, or any of the archa­ic sex­u­al prac­tices of ret­ro­grade ejac­u­la­tion and the like.

This does­n’t mean that I’m a per­fect Taoist, inso­far as there are no per­fect Christians, or per­fect peo­ple. The Tao Te Ching is my bible. It guides me on how to live and behave as much as it is a label of my exist­ing beliefs. There are things I have yet to learn, apply, or both.

I think I’ve always been a Taoist. I just nev­er knew it. For as long as I can remem­ber, I’ve lived by the prin­ci­ples of bal­ance, empti­ness (or recep­tive­ness), and strength of flex­i­bil­i­ty. I’m glad that it’s a part of the cul­ture of my blood. It makes me proud. Understanding Cantonese has cer­tain­ly helped me appre­ci­ate the beau­ty of it all.

One does­n’t decide to become a Taoist. The Way is described as hav­ing no begin­ning or end. You must become one with it.

As such, a trav­el­er is at his des­ti­na­tion at every part of the jour­ney.

  1. I’ve come to see that the ideas are eas­i­ly lost in trans­la­tion [↩]

Puddles

Thumbnail: Puddles sniffs
Thumbnail: Puddles on a leash
Thumbnail: Puddles yawns
Thumbnail: Puddles on the couch
Thumbnail: Sleepy Puddles
Thumbnail: Big head Puddles

Puddles was the sole sur­vivor of a lit­ter of pup­pies left in the cold of Canadian win­ter, because the own­er did­n’t want to keep them. He stayed alive by bury­ing him­self under his moth­ers body to stay warm. At a cou­ple weeks old he was tak­en to his new and per­ma­nent home, where he’s lived for over 13 years.

Puddles is cur­rent­ly suf­fer­ing from aller­gies (he’s chewed through his fur), arthri­tis, and severe dia­betes. He can’t even make it up the front steps with­out the momen­tum of a run. Once a healthy 110 pound dog, he now weighs 88lbs.

I was com­mis­sioned to take some pic­tures of him with the kids before he pass­es.

Thumbnail: Fresh baguette
Thumbnail: Shrimp pasta

In return, I was offered din­ner; a savoury pas­ta with tiger shrimp and lemon zest, along with apple crisp for dessert. All made from scratch.

This was a small exer­cise in shoot­ing RAW (used for about half the shots). It’s great to not wor­ry about white bal­ance and to have an extra stop expo­sure adjust­ment, but I still find that get­ting the pro­cess­ing right is a bit tricky.