Posts in category "Daily Life"

Snowstorm

Snow surrounds a bus shelter

Snow weighs down branches

Snow taller than a trash bin

Townhouses in winter

Snow is a rel­a­tive­ly hard thing to cap­ture on film. With so much white, there’s very lit­tle con­trast or tex­ture, so noth­ing to lead the eye. You want to give a sense of being suf­fo­cat­ed by all this now, but too much of the same thing in a pic­ture becomes bor­ing. It’s bal­anc­ing the sub­ject and work­ing with avail­able light that becomes impor­tant.

I don’t think we’ve reached the record for snow­fall yet, but we’re close. I tried to walk to work, but gave up. Even trudg­ing through the snow to get these shots left me sweat­ing. It’s days like these that I’m thank­ful that I live in a con­do, because my con­do fees go towards shov­el­ing the park­ing lot. People told me they had to shov­el their dri­ve­ways a cou­ple times in one night.

Traces of Me

I’m just com­ing off a mod­er­ate cold I’ve had for the last week. All the clas­sic symp­toms — run­ny, stuffy nose, con­ges­tion, slight headache, yel­low phlegm — but odd­ly enough, bare­ly a hint sore throat. It’s been unpleas­ant to say the least.

A lit­tle while ago, Tiana wrote “I look in the bowl after to see how impres­sive it was. I’m pret­ty sure you do too”.

This cold has made me real­ize that I not only look in the bowl (I’m sure Freud would diag­nose us as being fix­at­ed in the anal stage of psy­cho­sex­u­al devel­op­ment), but I open my Kleenex after blow­ing in it as well, to check for dis­coloured mucus, phlegm, blood, or bits of brain that may have escaped through my nose.

All Work And No Play

I’m sit­ting on my chaise in the dark, Macbook Pro in lap, cur­tains open to the snow out­side. Every now and then, the wind catch­es a loose patch of snow, and it sounds like sand drag­ging along the ground out­side. If you close your eyes, it’s like you’re sit­ting on a beach at low-tide under a night sky.

I haven’t done this in a while.

The show is over. There’s sup­posed to be one more inter­view next week, but at least I can breathe now. I’ve final­ly had time to clean the house, which is prob­a­bly why I feel com­fort­able enough to write.

There are icons for movies on my desk­top, ones I’ve start­ed watch­ing but haven’t fin­ished, because I haven’t been able to emo­tion­al­ly invest in them. I did, how­ev­er, get a chance to watch Cidade de Deus which is the best movie I’ve seen in months, and Constantine, pure­ly for the Tilda-Swinton-as-angel fac­tor.

Tilda Swinton in Constantine

I real­ized that I like girls who look like boys. I hope this does­n’t mean I’m gay.

On a sticky, I seem to have writ­ten “a small pair of skis”. I don’t remem­ber doing this, or what for. There’s also a phone num­ber there with no name. I want to call the num­ber to find out who it is, but I’d just hang up if some­one answered and that’d be rude.

I should call Dan. I should reor­ga­nize my pho­tos for appro­pri­ate back­up. I should be prac­tic­ing Tai Chi. I should be hav­ing more fun. I should be fill­ing out my thought record work­sheets.

But right now, I should real­ly be in bed.

Last Day of the Exhibition

An article in the Metro.

There’s a lit­tle arti­cle in The Metro today about the gallery. In the pic­ture, around the harpist, is part of my Fruit and Body series. I’ve decid­ed to make it a lim­it­ed edi­tion print of 100 each at 18″×12″. So far I’ve sold four, with two poten­tials.

It’s the last day of the exhib­it. I’ll be there again tonight because anoth­er paper wants some pic­tures of the artists, and so I can meet with any guests, includ­ing one of my buy­ers. If you stop by, don’t for­get to sign the guest­book!

Psychoanalytic Reflections 02

My ther­a­pist is still get­ting to know me. Now I have books to read and work­sheets to fill out. It’s some­what strange; I’ve been putting myself through self-help for years, but I’ve nev­er traced it so far back to my child­hood. I don’t like to blame my par­ents because I see how Darren and Pat have sur­vived far “worse” but it’s get­ting more and more obvi­ous that there’s trau­ma in my child­hood that still affects me to this day.

  • Apparently, I’m mod­er­ate­ly depressed, and “mod­er­ate” is not nor­mal.
  • We’ve fig­ured out that my unassertive­ness is the result of con­flict avoid­ance. Even if I prac­tice a sit­u­a­tion in my head where I say some­thing that may bring up con­flict, I often can’t fol­low through. I feel help­less to fix this, and this leads to a self-defeat­ing atti­tude.
    • This stems from my child­hood. I’ve almost nev­er argued with my par­ents (there were two times in my life I felt strong­ly enough to stand up against them, both end­ing in me sub­mit­ting because there was no rea­son­ing with them). I’ve always felt like I would­n’t be loved unless I got good grades and did every­thing I was told. In oth­er words, it was an extreme­ly con­di­tion­al love.
    • This means I care about what peo­ple think of me, and I define or eval­u­ate my self-worth through them. Knowing this piss­es me off because philo­soph­i­cal­ly and prag­mat­i­cal­ly I don’t agree, but can’t do any­thing about it.
  • Every time I’ve been in ther­a­py, I’ve cried at least once. This hap­pens when­ev­er I bring up spe­cif­ic aspects of my rela­tion­ship with my par­ents.
  • Hearing my ther­a­pist say, “Wow, that’s bad” brings me a com­fort­ing val­i­da­tion to what I feel.
  • Aside from being slight­ly ver­bose, my ther­a­pist is great. He’s a non-judg­men­tal, eth­i­cal, open-mind­ed intel­lec­tu­al. He’s also a good lis­ten­er.