Posts in category "Daily Life"

To begin again

It’s snow­ing. The first of the sea­son, and it has­n’t stopped for four hours.

Finally.

I have so many things to write about, but this is the only thing on my mind right now.

snow

The view out the back.

Nothing fills me with hope the way snow does. I write about this every year. If there were ever a Wikipedia entry about me that said love, depres­sion, and win­ter, were all themes in my work, it’d be right.

a change of seasons

We’re doing this a lit­tle dif­fer­ent­ly tonight.

I decid­ed that I don’t spend enough time in my liv­ing room. I’m always at the com­put­er in the cor­ner of the bed­room. It’s my crawl­space, my cozy nook, thanks to the dark­ness and a decent set of speak­ers. Then I go to sleep on the couch in the liv­ing room.

But I used to spend nights writ­ing in this liv­ing room. Usually on the ground with my back to a patch of wall between the win­dow (open, of course) and the back door. Or with a mug of tea at the din­ing table. Nights full of warmth, and emo­tion, and clar­i­ty. I miss that. Back when I could still write about love. Back when I had love to write about.

Violet

But I’m here now in my blan­kets with my lap­top. On the TV is The Brown Bunny in all it’s grainy old-school glo­ry, and Vincent Gallo, that sexy moth­er­fuck­er. I wish I could be as cocky. The sec­ond time through the movie you real­ize that all the girls are named after flow­ers.

kiss

Sunday night feels like it’s been alter­nat­ing between snow and rain all week­end. As per tra­di­tion, I’m see­ing how long I can go with­out turn­ing on the fur­nace before it gets too cold. I’ve nev­er mind­ed the chill; it only makes blan­kets and hood­ies all the more com­fort­able. My cat tends to be a lot more cud­dlier too, and aggres­sive even, in where she plants her­self next to me.

I’ve been wait­ing for the snow to come. Even with the has­sle and the mess and the bit­ing cold, it’s still worth it to wake up to a white world.

bodies

 

I’ve been drawn to pho­tog­ra­phy again. With video, an impor­tant moment can be eas­i­ly lost, but with pho­tog­ra­phy the view­er has no choice but to con­front the sin­gle frame pre­sent­ed to them. There’s also some­thing about a lack of con­text. A pho­to­graph is more con­ducive to let­ting an audi­ence won­der what has hap­pened to lead up to the image, and what hap­pened after.

The prob­lem is that I don’t have any­thing to pho­to­graph any­more. I feel so unin­spired. I nev­er go out. Sometimes I won­der if I’m get­ting more and more anti-social. I work from home for four days a week now. Every time I think I should pick up the phone and call some­one to catch up, I nev­er do.

I’m start­ing to feel less and less guilty about it. I can’t tell if I’m get­ting com­fort­able, or just lazy.

House Show II

I’m still catch­ing my breath from the awe­some­ness that was the sec­ond House Show. So much plan­ning, prepa­ra­tion, and prac­tice went into one night that I felt like I’d giv­en birth when it was over; I did­n’t know how to feel, or what to think.

Darren came up the day before to hang out, and along with Shane, Blais (his son), and Chris, stayed until Sunday. After the show we stayed up talk­ing, pick­ing Shane’s brain about his com­po­si­tion process and influ­ences. Everything went bet­ter than I could have planned, and I’m thank­ful that so many of my friends were there to share the expe­ri­ence with me.

cupcakes

Meet the cupcakes (from left to right):

Black and White (Belgian dark choco­late cake with vanil­la frost­ing and choco­late sprin­kles), straw­ber­ry (pure straw­ber­ry cake with sweet cream cheese frost­ing and red sug­ar flower on top), hazel­nut choco­late (hazel­nut-choco­late cake with Belgian dark choco­late frost­ing dec­o­rat­ed with a toast­ed hazel­nut on top), vanil­la (vanil­la cake and frost­ing, flavoured with Madagascar bour­bon vanil­la with sprin­kles), and key lime pie (lime-infused cake and cream cheese frost­ing with lime zest).

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