Yearly Archives: 2008

Bridgehead

We met on the bus, side-by-side, read­ing books that both won Nobel Prizes.

I was sup­posed to meet you here three years ago, and they’re out of apple cider. The cran­ber­ry cider is tart, but only too much when you sip it so. There’s a sub­tly dis­tinct taste to it, bare­ly enough to stop me from won­der­ing if I just paid $2.45 for warm cran­ber­ry juice. I did­n’t even want this drink; I just want­ed to sit down and write.

I nev­er would have come here if you had­n’t sug­gest­ed it. There are too many peo­ple. Too many going for the fresh­ly-ground­ed, shade-grown, fair trade bull­shit that’s been mar­ket­ed to the hip­sters who think they’re doing the world a favour by patron­iz­ing the right kind of places. Pretentious peo­ple who come here to read, then put their head­phones on because it’s too noisy.

I don’t fit in. That’s prob­a­bly a good thing.

I was sup­posed to meet you here three years ago, but your boyfriend got jeal­ous and would­n’t let you come.

We met on the bus, and I haven’t seen you since.

A Cold And Grey Summer Day

My room is a mess, a side-effect of my busy sched­ule. I should be clean­ing. Hell, I should be sleep­ing, but I’d rather write instead, see­ing as how I haven’t had a chance in four days. It would appear as if I’m going through some sort of expres­sion with­draw­al.

Vincent Gallo prac­ti­cal­ly wrote this entry for me.

I had When by Vincent Gallo play­ing here.

(If you’re going to lis­ten to this song, turn the lights down, or at least close your eyes. Remove your­self of any ambi­ent noise. Breathe slow­ly for 30 sec­onds before play­ing it. This song deserves it. You deserve it.)

Even though it went up to 28°C today, the morn­ing start­ed cold and calm. There was so much mois­ture in the air that one could taste the grey.

It made me strange­ly sto­ic when I left the house. Something about the whether that remind­ed me of how com­fort­ing it can be to feel sad. It’s as if the earth had decid­ed to com­pli­ment my mood with cloud cov­er. I can’t even explain the cause of my sad­ness, and can only guess that real­iza­tion and accep­tance are set­ting in. The only sav­ing grace is that I feel con­fi­dent enough to pick myself up and move on. Not that I want to do it alone right now. Wish I had the option.

As the day dragged on, things start­ed to wear me down. Exhaustion dried my eyes. I kept try­ing to pick myself up, kept try­ing to hide my sigh­ing sad­ness from those around me, to no avail.

Wish I had a smile in my wardrobe for days like this.

Pregasaurus

Pregnant with hope

Tiana asked me to take some pic­tures of her dur­ing her preg­nan­cy so she could have a record of what her body looks like com­pared to the rockin’ body it was before. In return, she posed for some oth­er projects I had in mind.

Pregnant body

It was an exer­cise in colour tones and mood. As I’m get­ting more com­fort­able in work­ing with RAW files, I want­ed to try my hand at adjust­ing tint, expo­sure, sat­u­ra­tion, and con­trast.

At one point I asked her how to spell “pre­gasaurus” (a term she came up with to encap­su­late her girth), and she remind­ed me that it was a made-up word, with no com­mon­ly accept­ed way of spelling it.

Pregnant and sleeping

The media makes preg­nan­cy out to be such a glam­orous affair, with design­er clothes and celebri­ty births, that it seems to be dele­te­ri­ous­ly affect­ing the younger gen­er­a­tion. I want­ed to por­tray preg­nan­cy in a much more casu­al, nat­ur­al light. Hence the ghet­to T‑shirt and the bel­ly stick­ing out.

Pregnant eating poutine

Thanks goes to Tiana for not only get­ting nude for me, but for being so pho­to­genic at eight months through the preg­nan­cy, and work­ing with me on these ideas.

Randomness and Disconnection

So much to say in my head, but when I sit down, it all dis­ap­pears. It’s as if being in front of a blank page, with the all the pos­si­bil­i­ties before me, is cathar­sis enough.

Many things to do has left me with lit­tle time to write. A trip to Toronto for the long week­end means I have to make sure all my bat­ter­ies are charged (one for the dig­i­tal cam­era, two for the HD cam­corder, three sets for the flash­es), and my mem­o­ry cards (two for the dig­i­tal cam­era, two for the HD cam­corder) are cleared.

Thunder has inter­rupt­ed this post. I opened up the blinds to see the rain­fall, and the light from the street lamps has come spilling into the room. This makes me real­ize that the hot choco­late can­dle Shirley gave me for Christmas, along with the glare of my Macbook Pro screen, weren’t doing a great job of illu­mi­nat­ing my writ­ing nook. I had Thrice play­ing, but have turned it down so I can hear the sheets of water pour­ing through the street.

Got a bunch of stuff done tonight. While pick­ing up some gro­ceries, I was served by a book­ish girl with braces. She had a dis­tinct lisp, but car­ried on ebul­lient­ly as if she had the most beau­ti­ful voice in the world. Later on, as I walked through the mall, I caught this Katherine-with-a‑K slouched back in a seat in the food court, eat­ing din­ner with one arm in her lap. It remind­ed me of an entry I wrote about a girl doing the same thing six years ago. How I wish for that kind of peace and seren­i­ty. How long ago that was (uni­ver­si­ty!). How dif­fer­ent I was back then.

Been feel­ing very aloof late­ly. Not sure if it’s me, or some­thing my mind is doing to pro­tect itself. Maybe it’s a way of dis­con­nect­ing myself from the world. I must need it right now. This after­noon I was read­ing from a book of Tai Chi clas­sics Louise bought me, and found one part par­tic­u­lar­ly fit­ting1: “Do not be con­cerned with form. Do not be con­cerned with the ways in which form man­i­fests. It is best to for­get your own exis­tence”.

  1. Listed as the first of the Eight Truths of Tai Chi. [↩]