Posts in category "Daily Life"

Hanging Party

I feel utter­ly intox­i­cat­ed.

Reading poems around the piano

With a ham­mer and a lad­der, we hung my pic­tures tonight, care­ful­ly decid­ing where to place each one to bal­ance the colours, the ori­en­ta­tions, the shapes, and the con­cepts.

Amongst the wine and the wood, the kids and the colours, we stopped to admire the art in the house. Adrienne dropped by to share her lat­est graph­ic poems with us, along with her alco­holic find­ings. “From The Desk Of” Penelope was writ­ten that day, dense and deep, full of details tak­en for grant­ed. The words must write them­selves, I thought.

Thumbnail: Poem reading
Thumbnail: My fruit and body series wall
Thumbnail: Old fashioned side-table
Thumbnail: Akio
Thumbnail: A hammer and a poem
Thumbnail: Old style heater
Thumbnail: Frederic and Akio
Thumbnail: Nicole Beaumont artwork
Thumbnail: Akio on the ladder
Thumbnail: Wine, ice, and salad

Misun and I seem to share a kin­ship through our appre­ci­a­tion of expres­sion, some­thing I’ve nev­er had with my friends. Not that there’s any­thing wrong with them, but I’ve always felt like they can’t relate to me when it comes to emo­tions or cre­ativ­i­ty. As I seem to be the cre­ative broth­er she’s always want­ed, and she seems to be the sup­port­ive sis­ter I’ve always need­ed, we agreed to be adopt­ed sib­lings.

In a recent inter­view, Frédéric said, in his ebul­lient Parisian accent, that one of the rea­sons he want­ed to open the Salon is to pro­mote dia­logue and inter­ac­tion. Perhaps it’s this hunger for dia­logue that con­nects us. He also men­tioned to me he was stressed out about being inter­viewed; being put on the spot made him freeze up. I told him I had the same prob­lem with pret­ty girls. “You’re affect­ed by beau­ty”, he said, some­thing I knew, but not some­thing that every­one under­stands.

I left, feel­ing like I was a part of some­thing won­der­ful, some­thing greater than myself.

In The News

On the bus today, a reporter from the CBC called me for an inter­view. She start­ed ask­ing me why I got into pho­tog­ra­phy, where I want­ed to go with it, and the like. It was strange to be answer­ing these ques­tions because as far as I’ve gone with my pho­tog­ra­phy, no one has ever asked them before. I sup­pose most peo­ple assume it’s like anoth­er hob­by, with­out pur­pose or mean­ing.

Newspaper article

There was also a lit­tle men­tion of my name in the local fran­coph­o­ne paper. I find it fun­ny that when trans­lat­ed lit­er­al­ly, the title of the arti­cle in English is “Go, all with the Living room!”.

My Mom Keeps Calling

And I keep hang­ing up.

The first thing she asks, non­cha­lant­ly like noth­ing has hap­pened, is whether I’ve eat­en yet. This is some­thing thing she used to say at the begin­ning of every phone call. One of her old habits, to make sure I’m eat­ing enough.

I did­n’t answer her ques­tion, but asked what she want­ed. She told me she just want­ed to see how I was doing.

She does­n’t get it. I don’t want to talk to her. I nev­er want to talk to her again. Every call is a reminder of the wounds that haven’t healed.

It’s like hav­ing your rapist show up at the door with flow­ers.

The Legend Of The Wayne Gretzky Coffee

Knowing his pref­er­ence for how he likes his cof­fee1, I jok­ing­ly told him he should get a Wayne Gretzky on the way to Timmies this morn­ing. Until today, he had nev­er even heard of Tim Hortons, and must have thought that all Canadian prod­ucts are named after Canadian heroes. “What’s that?” he asked me. “Nine cream and nine sug­ar, like Gretzky’s jer­sey num­ber; 99”, I told him.

“That sounds good”.

So I walked up to the counter, made my order, and looked at him. He gave me a nod, so I turned to the girl behind the counter again, and said, “Extra large cof­fee. Nine cream, nine sug­ar”.

In a com­plete­ly dead­pan face, she asked, “Are you seri­ous?”.

“Yep.”

And this is prob­a­bly the great­est thing I’ve ever expe­ri­enced.

  1. The pre­vi­ous day, I asked him how many cream and sug­ar he takes. Expecting a quan­ti­ta­tive mea­sure, he just told me, “A lot”. [↩]

Signs Of Senility

I’m exhaust­ed today. I try not to acknowl­edge it, but my body keeps remind­ing me.

How is it doing this?

I just peeled a banana, and with the peel in my hand I threw the banana in the garbage.

My dad did the same thing once with an orange. “The old man’s going senile”, I thought to myself.

Hopefully, it’s not due to some degen­er­a­tive brain dis­ease, but the 12-hours I put in at work until mid­night yes­ter­day.

My new sched­ule involves going to ther­a­py after work on Mondays. Today, I also have to go to my framer to sign my pho­tos and mats after­wards. I was going to pick up a drop cloth and back­ground stand at the pho­tog­ra­phy store in between, but I think I’ll skip that.

We’re in the mid­dle of a serv­er swap at work, so I expect client com­put­ers to be burst­ing into flames today. I’m also orga­niz­ing a pot luck for the com­pa­ny at the end of the week.

My mind feels like it’s going in eight dif­fer­ent direc­tions at once.

But as long as I feel, I know I’m alright.