Monthly Archives: October 2009

What I Mean To Say

Usually, when peo­ple ask me why it was so spe­cial, I say “When it worked, it worked real­ly well”.

What I real­ly mean to say is,

“It was the way her kiss­es would trav­el down my spine. The way she wore her hair dif­fer­ent­ly every time I saw her. The way her cheeks would round so endear­ing­ly when she tru­ly laughed. The way she could look beau­ti­ful wear­ing dress­es, or jeans, or my old paja­mas. The way the tan­ta­liz­ing gold­en down trav­eled along her low­er back. The way her body felt against mine when I pulled her close.

It was because she brought me green tea bub­ble bath when I was home sick for three days with strep throat. Cause she loved try­ing new things, like taro dumplings, and ha gow and sui mai and tofu flower, and bub­ble tea. Cause she would buy me ben­gal spice tea, and hand creams, and soaps, and flow­ers for no rea­son in par­tic­u­lar.

It was because she liked tak­ing pho­tos of me too. Cause she would remem­ber the things I want­ed when men­tion­ing them in pass­ing so she could look them up and buy them for me lat­er. Cause she tru­ly appre­ci­at­ed the gifts that I gave her. Cause she spent so long prepar­ing for my birth­day last year, even though she knows I don’t cel­e­brate it. Cause she helped me seek ther­a­py for my anx­i­ety issues. Cause she came with me to con­certs when I did­n’t want to go alone. Cause she loved The Mars Volta and Shane Watt as much as I do.

It was the way she could cre­ate so many beau­ti­ful things with her hands, using paint or chalk or ton­er or lead or met­al or choco­late. The way she sup­port­ed me and my pho­tog­ra­phy. The way we would take turns choos­ing movies and watched them togeth­er, even though our tastes were so dif­fer­ent. The way she got along with my friends and loved my cat.

It was the way I would fall in love with her over and over again every day.

In her, I had found the per­son I was look­ing for my whole life, and she held me cap­tive every moment we were togeth­er.”

But I nev­er do.

Dinner With The Timmites

Thumbnail: Philly melt
Thumbnail: Quesadilla
Thumbnail: Ham tortellini
Thumbnail: Veggie burger
Thumbnail: Zoom H2

Tim was in town for a pre­sen­ta­tion this week­end, so a few of us went to din­ner at a restau­rant close to where he used to live. It turns out this place used to be called Drumlin’s Pub, which I knew from sec­ond year of uni­ver­si­ty, ohhh…seven years ago? I dis­tinct­ly remem­ber being in there once, doing shots at the bar1 while sit­ting next to an old­er guy who was over $30k in debt to OSAP, telling me to go after the big­ger girls cause they do way more “stuff”. On our drink­ing tours of the city back then, we would always try to find a place that served good, cheap wings, and Strongbow. If I remem­ber cor­rect­ly, Drumlin’s had hearty hon­ey gar­lic, but no cider.

Now that it’s under new man­age­ment, it has a real­ly gener­ic name — like Sandy Hill Bar And Grill — though it makes up for this fact with much bet­ter pub fare. Such social oppor­tu­ni­ties are great for test­ing out the 360° sur­round capa­bil­i­ties of the Zoom H2 sound recorder I recent­ly pur­chased as an invest­ment towards bet­ter sound pro­duc­tion in my videos.

In his defence, Tim was sur­prised to dis­cov­er that Jess has a new boyfriend, and was being (jok­ing­ly) self-dep­re­cat­ing about his sex life. Next at the table was Reagan2, who was asked about hers. Jess picked up the mic and point­ed it at me, per­haps to shift the atten­tion away from Reagan and shield her from embar­rass­ment. Of course, it all plays out much nicer when you have a record­ing of it.

  1. Back then I drank with Iain, so it would have been tequi­la. [↩]
  2. Note to self: pro­nounced “Ray-gun” [↩]

Sex In Between

One time, she sud­den­ly asked me, “Have you had sex with any­one else?”, which she used to imply as between the last time and what we were about to do. It was a valid ques­tion, since we’re both sen­si­tive to the pro­lif­er­a­tion of Cupid’s itch and Venus’s curse.

I was insult­ed that she asked, because at the time I felt like sex with some­one else would have been cheat­ing on her. As uncom­mit­ted as the rela­tion­ship was, she still had my heart, and con­se­quent­ly, oth­er parts of my body as well. I’m also not like that, and it takes a lot before I decide to be inti­mate with some­one. But at the same time, I was flat­tered that she thought I would or could, a lit­tle boost to my ego that is rarely ruled by machis­mo or testos­terone.

“I haven’t either”, she reas­sured, which was some­thing I nat­u­ral­ly assumed of my mod­est muse, so it was of lit­tle com­fort to me.

The Dawning: Rachel CD Release Concert

When Rachel Beausoleil start­ed work­ing on her lat­est album, she approached me about design­ing the art­work. We sat down and threw around some ideas before she even start­ed record­ing, but did­n’t come up with any­thing sol­id because I did­n’t have a sound to go on. All I knew was that it was a med­ley of songs, not like her last album where the songs fol­lowed a theme.

One day I came home to find a record­ing of the album in my mail­box, yet to be mas­tered. She named the album after the epony­mous track, The Dawning, which is a jazz arrange­ment of the famous song Aquarius, a per­son­al anthem of hers.

The Dawning artwork front

She gave me her notes soon after, so I put on the album and gave it a good lis­ten, feel­ing a cer­tain clar­i­ty from her sound. It made me think about dawn, and space, and sun­ris­es, and hot colours, so I incor­po­rat­ed those ele­ments when lay­ing out the text, as well as some bokeh to give an off-focus glim­mer.

Continue read­ing “The Dawning: Rachel CD Release Concert”…

Waiting For A White Christmas

I can’t wait until the Christmas hol­i­days. I’ll have a chance to work on projects I’ve put on hold to make time for paid work. A chance to breathe. A chance to do noth­ing. Some seri­ous me time, inside my warm house, watch­ing a movie while wrapped in blan­kets. Lazy maple bacon every day, her­mi­tiz­ing. I may even decide to go home and vis­it peo­ple I always mean to see when I’m in Toronto, but nev­er have a chance to.

I’m busy with side-work until the new year, and cur­rent­ly not accept­ing new work. On the social end, I’ve come to a point where I’m not only booked, but dou­ble-booked, and find myself hav­ing to pri­or­i­tize plans and decide what I’d rather do. It’s been great for keep­ing my brain busy, and where­as I’d nor­mal­ly feel over­stim­u­lat­ed, I’m now rev­el­ing in all these awe­some expe­ri­ences and peo­ple I get to meet.

This does­n’t feel like a tran­si­tion phase, as the tran­si­tion, or what­ev­er the hell it is, already hap­pened weeks ago. I was at fork in the road, and now that I’ve tak­en the first steps, I find myself on a one-way path through a tun­nel with­out any exits, won­der­ing what’s on the oth­er end.