Yearly Archives: 2010

Love, Eclipses, and Other Ephemera

365 days ago, you were sit­ting at a lit­tle round table in front of me. It was a cool day, with the light of the sun com­ing through big glass win­dows, and the way you were turned cast a shad­ow on the small dim­ple on your chest. How well I came to know that expanse of skin, nev­er tak­en for grant­ed by lips or fin­ger­tips.

I was filled with noth­ing but hap­pi­ness in that moment. By that point, I planned on mar­ry­ing you one day, as I had, per­haps a lit­tle fool­ish­ly, dreamed of build­ing a life with you. The only thing left was fig­ur­ing out how to con­vince you to dream a lit­tle bit too.

muse, turned

 

A few things have hap­pened since we last spoke. Nothing impor­tant enough to men­tion if I ever bumped into an old lover and tried to make small talk. Except, per­haps, that my grand­moth­er passed away, Aaron and Karen are expect­ing anoth­er child, and I start­ed pur­su­ing a life­long dream of becom­ing an ama­teur astronomer.

In one class I learned the Sun’s dis­tance from the Earth is about 400 times the Moon’s dis­tance, and the Sun’s diam­e­ter is about 400 times the Moon’s diam­e­ter. It’s the fact that these ratios are approx­i­mate­ly equal that caus­es the Sun and Moon to appear the same size when the three astro­nom­i­cal objects line up, cre­at­ing the effect we observe dur­ing a total eclipse. If the Sun were any clos­er, we would­n’t see the fierce coro­na that bor­ders the shad­ow of the moon. Any fur­ther, and a ring of the Sun’s light would still be vis­i­ble. It’s a phe­nom­e­non that’s unique in our solar sys­tem, due to the sheer improb­a­bil­i­ty of these pre­req­ui­sites occur­ring.

eclipse

(I did­n’t take this pic­ture.)

Eclipses are a rare phe­nom­e­non. Total eclipses even more so; they occur every 18 months, at dif­fer­ent loca­tions, and nev­er last more than a few min­utes as the shad­ow moves along the ground at over 1700 km/h.

Maybe this is why some peo­ple chase them, mak­ing pil­grim­ages to loca­tions where an eclipse is pre­dict­ed to hap­pen. One group even rent­ed a plane and flew along the dark­est part of the shad­ow cast by the moon as it trav­eled over the Earth, and arti­fi­cial­ly extend­ed an eclipse from 7 min­utes to 74 min­utes. Which, in my book, is pret­ty awe­some.

People who’ve been through an eclipse give sim­i­lar accounts of the expe­ri­ence; it looks like night in a mat­ter of min­utes, it feels like the heat is being sucked out of the ground, the ani­mals get all spooked out because they know some­thing extra­or­di­nary is hap­pen­ing.

But the Moon is also drift­ing away from the Earth at a rate of 3.8 cm a year, which means there even­tu­al­ly won’t be any more total solar eclipses. We hap­pen to be liv­ing in a time when we can still expe­ri­ence them, as future gen­er­a­tions will only have sec­ond-hand accounts from our best words and pic­tures. They won’t be able to feel the change in the atmos­phere, as the Sun hides behind the Moon for that brief moment. How for­tu­nate we are to be able to expe­ri­ence this event, which not only requires the heav­en­ly bod­ies to line up, but also requires us to be at the right place on the right plan­et at the right time.

sushi

 

I began to won­der what com­bi­na­tion of forces brought us there, to sit in the warmth of spring in a sushi shop down­town. Why fate had deliv­ered you to my office one morn­ing, for you to toss your head back and gig­gle and walk away after I made some corny joke at our intro­duc­tion.

We were two trav­el­ing bod­ies on our own paths that hap­pened to align for a few spins around the sun. It was a beau­ti­ful acci­dent, a gaso­line rain­bow, an expe­ri­ence as spe­cial as it was serendip­i­tous that left me for­ev­er changed.

Every pic­ture I took was to cap­ture what I feared I’d nev­er see again, and when our paths diverged, I kept look­ing at those pho­tos, won­der­ing what kept me drawn to these mem­o­ries.

Then I real­ized it was because I did­n’t want it to end. You were my eclipse, and I was a man on that plane, chas­ing a shad­ow.

Trying to live in your love a moment longer.

CITY AIRLINE FLIGHT STATUS

Whenever I trav­el to the States, I can’t help but won­der if I could live here. Or any­where out­side of Canada, for that mat­ter.

But I know it’s nev­er more than a pass­ing fan­cy. I’m always hap­pi­er to touch down at home, than any­where else.

flight status board

Never, ever, ever fly through Philly. I’m pret­ty sure the air­port is in cahoots with the restau­rants and hotels, and they delay you every time you fly in to get you to spend mon­ey.

Famous Blue Raincoat (ukulele cover)

Almost three months ago, I walked into a music store and bought a ukulele. I did­n’t even know the frets on the ukulele (or gui­tar, for that mat­ter) were raised; I thought they were just lines paint­ed on the neck used as guide­lines for fin­ger posi­tions. Ever since, it’s filled a void in me. A void I did­n’t even know exist­ed until I found myself feel­ing emp­ty when I did­n’t get a chance to play.

Famous Blue Raincoat is one of my favourite Leonard Cohen songs. I wish I could write let­ters like this.

I haven’t quite fig­ured out what kind of style or genre I want to apply to the ukulele, but I think my singing abil­i­ty (or lack there­of) will lim­it me to the soft Sam Beam folk sound unless I start­ed tak­ing singing lessons. Borrowed in my inter­pre­ta­tion is a vari­a­tion of the pick­ing pat­tern Cohen uses in a lot of his ear­li­er songs, such as Hey That’s No Way To Say Goodbye, adapt­ed for the sopra­no ukulele.

While my brain picks out the mis­takes and details I need to work on when I see myself play, I try to keep in mind the words of my Tai Chi teacher, “We’re nev­er as bad as we fear nor as good as we would like”. I don’t think I’ll ever be sat­is­fied with my musi­cal abil­i­ty unless I could com­mit a lot more time to it. Unfortunately, that would mean less time for anoth­er hob­by, so I have to accept that this will prob­a­bly be close to the lim­it of my abil­i­ty. Hopefully, I’ll be able to clean things up in anoth­er few years. Patience will come from learn­ing to be sat­is­fied from the act of play­ing itself, and not the mas­tery of it. For now, this’ll serve as record of my progress.

To the person who broke into my car last night

You stole:

  • My Apple ear­buds, which I did­n’t care much about, cause they’re shit­ty and feel like stale muffins in your ears. The only rea­son I had these in the car was to talk hands­free while dri­ving. Which was prob­a­bly only three times a year, but very use­ful when need­ed.
  • About $20 in change, which is more than I need for park­ing, but this was also the spon­ta­neous junk food fund.
  • My GPS charg­er, which was in case the bat­tery dies on the road (cause I hate dri­ving with it plugged in). I don’t keep my GPS in the car when it’s cold to pre­serve the bat­tery, and I haven’t need­ed it since the win­ter. I’m pret­ty sure you would have stolen my GPS if it was in there.
  • My iPhone charg­er, which was brand-spank­ing new, and used for long road trips.
  • My aux­il­liary audio cable, which I use to play my iPhone tracks over my car stereo. I was think­ing of replac­ing it any­way cause it was way too long and the bunched cable looked like clut­ter, but I was still annoyed by the fact that I had to dri­ve 10 min­utes to the near­est Circuit City to buy anoth­er with­out being able to lis­ten to the music I want­ed.

You did­n’t steal:

  • My wheel locks, which would have been no use to you with­out the key, and annoy­ing for me to replace. So…thanks?
  • My assort­ed music CDs, which I need­ed an excuse to clean up any­way, so you not tak­ing them did­n’t do my any favours. They were also real­ly good songs, and not steal­ing them prob­a­bly means your taste in music sucks.
  • My mod­el cat, which I keep in the back seat and has been get­ting mixed reviews late­ly. About 50% of peo­ple are fine with it, and 50% are real­ly creeped out because they think it’s real and refuse to sit in the back unless I put it in the trunk. But it was a present from my uncle in Hong Kong, so I’m real­ly glad you did­n’t take it.
  • My emer­gency blan­ket and can­dles, which I felt like you should have tak­en, because I can’t imag­ine you being very warm if you’re a pet­ty crook.

I have to won­der if you were so upset about not find­ing any­thing valu­able that you decid­ed to steal things that aren’t even worth sell­ing or fenc­ing, out of spite. It was­n’t enough to make a claim on my insur­ance, so I have to buy this stuff again. But I don’t real­ly need any of it, except for the aux­il­iary cable, which I replaced with a fan­cy new retract­ing set and with which I’m much hap­pi­er.

Just this week I was read­ing about that colonel being charged with a string of break-ins to steal under­wear, and how the peo­ple in that neigh­bour­hood felt shak­en at the news. I empathized with them, and felt lucky that it did­n’t hap­pen near me.

But when I came out of my house and found the con­tents of my glove com­part­ment spilled onto the pas­sen­ger seat, I was remind­ed that this is a fact of life every­one is forced to accept, because no one is immune. It’s a nec­es­sary evil, to remind peo­ple that putting too much val­ue in our pos­ses­sions means we only have more to lose.

The only thing that both­ers me is that I feel vio­lat­ed. I’m pret­ty sure I locked my car, but there’s no sign of forced entry, so I won­der how you got in and whether you now have free access. I can’t change my park­ing spot. My car will always be there, so now I need to keep any­thing valu­able out of it. Not that big a deal real­ly, but it’s less con­ve­nient to have to remem­ber to bring change any time I want to park down­town. Also, in the spring I like to keep all the win­dows of my house open, and now I won’t feel safe doing that when I’m sleep­ing on a dif­fer­ent floor.

But I still con­sid­er myself lucky. Lucky you did­n’t make out with more than $100 worth of stuff. Lucky my first expe­ri­ence with theft was rel­a­tive­ly minor, and an inex­pen­sive les­son learned. Lucky I’ve been feel­ing good late­ly and that this inci­dent is only a small blip on my radar.

I can only hope that you used the change to feed your­self, because if you’re steal­ing ran­dom shit from cars, you prob­a­bly need the mon­ey more than I do.

But, please, don’t do it again, cause to be hon­est, I’d rather it was me eat­ing those McDonald’s french fries on Friday night.