Monthly Archives: February 2011

until tomorrow

The days go on con­tin­u­ous­ly, mea­sured in beats-per-minute. Winter’s here in all it’s bright glo­ry, but the sun sets a lit­tle lat­er every day, mark­ing the change of sea­sons. It’s the only way for me to keep track of the pass­ing time.

So many days are spent alone, yet I don’t feel lone­ly. The only prob­lem with iso­la­tion is that it lets me spend too much time with my own thoughts. This, com­bined with my intro­vert­ed ten­den­cies (which means my stim­u­la­tion comes from mem­o­ries), makes me feel like I’m trapped in the past. I sup­pose it’s not all bad, but it cer­tain­ly does make it hard­er for me to heal.

Bronwen puts on makeup

 

I don’t know what to write. There isn’t the same strug­gle or need to vent. I find myself sit­ting and star­ing at a blank screen for hours at a time. It’s not like I feel the need to say some­thing for the sake of it. There are still thoughts and ideas that linger, things to get off my chest, but they’re either too too sim­ple to men­tion, or too com­plex to put down.

It’s strange to see this path laid out before me. I could wan­der off and explore new things, but I’m still too com­fort­able.

Things don’t change, but I don’t think I mind so much any­more.

returns

The only thing I bought in Britain was this tea can­dle shade of the London sky­line, found in a shop filled with baubles and knick knacks where Mike and Emma took me. They had a feel­ing it was my kind of thing. Funny to think that they knew me so well already in those three days. I love watch­ing the shad­ows dance across the shade in warm colours.

I went through an entire spec­trum of emo­tions there. Through all the won­der and excite­ment were still moments of weak­ness, gid­di­ness, sad­ness, and inse­cu­ri­ty, because there are things you can’t escape by fly­ing to the oth­er side of the world.

I’ve since set­tled back into my old life. The trip did­n’t change me, not in any epiphan­ic way at least. It was more of an affir­ma­tion of myself and the way I’ve been see­ing things.

There were so many times that I was far out of my com­fort zone, thrust into inde­pen­dence, push­ing my lim­its, and that forced me to be objec­tive to keep my wits about me. In those objec­tive moments were objec­tive views of myself, where I began to under­stand that I was respon­si­ble for every­thing that was hap­pen­ing. For all the mem­o­ries and expe­ri­ences and footage and friend­ships.

And sud­den­ly, I real­ized, I like me.

One measures a circle, beginning anywhere

Been liv­ing on too much sin and not enough sleep, though most­ly it’s in the form of calo­ries and sug­ar. Thank god I have an Asian metab­o­lism.

Things are hap­pen­ing so quick­ly around me. Chris is get­ting seri­ous with his girl. Pat and Jen had their first baby, a boy named Kyden. ____’s get­ting mar­ried in April. (What? Yeah. What? Yeah.) Funny how I’m start­ing to feel like the one who’s all set­tled.

It makes me fan­tas­ti­cal­ly proud to say that I’ll be assum­ing best-man respon­si­bil­i­ties, though I still asked ____ who he was going appoint cause I nev­er feel like I can take any­thing in our friend­ship for grant­ed. His anger at my hav­ing asked was prob­a­bly the warmest ges­ture I’ve had in a while. That means with the bach­e­lor par­ty, the wed­ding, and anoth­er wed­ding I’ve to film, I’ll be dri­ving to Toronto three times between now and spring.

I’ve already lost ____ to an extent, as he’s only had about two months to plan his wed­ding, and he’s been busy with such. But even though our phone calls were my main form of con­tact with the out­side world, I haven’t noticed their absence, or as much as I thought I would at least. I think I’m get­ting used to being so out-of-touch with peo­ple. There’s so much ful­fill­ment one can find in a book or a movie or an instru­ment, let alone the vast­ness of the inter­net.

One of my ven­tures was mak­ing a tri­al World of Warcraft account1, just so I could try being social at a dis­tance, but I still could­n’t both­er inter­act­ing with oth­er peo­ple. And since the whole point of pay­ing a month­ly fee for an MMORPG is to have that kind of inter­ac­tion, I stopped when I maxed out at lev­el 202 on the third day. Good thing too, because it was the only thing I did for those three days.

I used to feel so guilty about being alone, think­ing I should be tak­ing advan­tage of some oppor­tu­ni­ty to be social. Then I real­ized that if I ever got too uncom­fort­able and lone­ly, I’d get up and do some­thing about it. I’m too hap­py and too com­fort­able here right now. I think that’s why I can’t tell if this is where I’m going, or where I already am.

  1. Which I’d pre­vi­ous­ly vowed nev­er to play, know­ing my addic­tive nature to any char­ac­ter-build­ing games, and WoWs nev­er-end­ing game­play. [↩]
  2. The max lev­el for tri­al accounts. [↩]

Larissa — Takamine F370SS

I sup­pose I should make a for­mal intro­duc­tion.

My dad knew I was look­ing for a gui­tar so I could start teach­ing myself, and his co-work­er’s daugh­ter hap­pened to be sell­ing hers. I decid­ed not to buy it cause I had no idea what it was, not to men­tion the fact that I’m noto­ri­ous­ly picky about these kinds of things. He bought me the gui­tar any­way (using my birth­day as an excuse), and I drove to Toronto to pick it up the first chance I had when I got back from Europe.

I asked Steve to do a demo of the gui­tar because his skills can real­ly show it off.

Takamine F370SS: guitar front

Takamine F370SS sol­id wood acoustic dread­nought.

It turns out the gui­tar is absolute­ly gor­geous, with sol­id spruce on top and sol­id koa on the back and sides. And being hand­made in Japan in 1999 — the only year this mod­el was in pro­duc­tion — makes it an instru­ment that will nev­er be replaced. An heir­loom I’ll pass down to my chil­dren if I ever have any.

Continue read­ing “Larissa — Takamine F370SS”…

And I shall call him Leonard and he shall be mine

I was going to wait to see how his per­son­al­i­ty devel­oped before set­tling on a name, and for a while I was call­ing him Serge (after Gainsbourg) cause he was almost over­ly affec­tion­ate, con­stant­ly paw­ing me and rub­bing my face with his. Eventually, I real­ized it’d be impos­si­ble for a cat to live up to such name­sakes, so I went with my first choice, which was Leonard. It has Leo in it, which is per­fect for any­thing from the fel­i­dae fam­i­ly. I could nev­er call him Lenny though cause “Lenny Cohen” sounds so wrong to me.

Leonard the cat on Dolly

 

I love cats with goofy faces, and I can tell Leonard has a bit of one already from the way his cheeks puff out. I also like my cats fat cause there’s more to hold when they decide to crawl into the cov­ers. As nov­el as it is to see how tiny Leonard is in com­par­i­son to Dolly, I’m look­ing for­ward to see him putting on some more weight.

Unfortunately, Dolly’s per­son­al­i­ty has changed. She’s a bit less affec­tion­ate, less vocal, and more sick­ly; I’ve been deal­ing with per­pet­u­al res­pi­ra­to­ry infec­tions and eye abscess­es ever since I brought Leonard home. I’m won­der­ing if she asso­ciates being mis­er­ably sick with the arrival of the new kit­ten. Her mater­nal instincts seem to kick in when he lies next to her, and she’ll try to lick and groom him, but he does­n’t seem to like it much and they end up fight­ing. Hopefully, he’ll grow into the habit.