Posts in category "Daily Life"

Emergence Exposition 02 Invitation

Carrot feet

The Emergence Exposition: Opus 02 vernissage is com­ing up in three weeks and if you’re in the Ottawa area, you can drop by to see my exhib­it!

The show is free. Over three hun­dred peo­ple were packed into the last one. I’ll be the one walk­ing around with a cam­era strapped to his hand.

Four exhibition rooms, Four creative styles

Like the exhi­bi­tions of old France, the idea of this gallery-house is to have a mix­ture of dif­fer­ent artis­tic styles.

J’ai eu envie de recréer quelque chose dans cet esprit-là. Il ya un côté intim­i­dant et même assez froid aux galeries d’art. Les gens n’osent pas tou­jours entr­er, mais je veux leur mon­tr­er que l’art c’est pour tout le monde, dans une ambiance chaleureuse.

— Frédéric Daty, gallery own­er

There will be four visu­al artists — met­al sculp­tor, ceram­ic sculp­tor, painter, pho­tog­ra­ph­er (me) — and three musi­cal artists — con­cert pianist, harpist, soft pop musi­cian. Featuring cham­pagne and home­made truf­fles too!

For more details and a glimpse at some more of my work in this theme, you can read the descrip­tion in the new pho­tog­ra­phy sec­tion, as well down­load the invi­ta­tion.

Long Exposure

It snowed all day yes­ter­day, and well into the night. The white­ness out­side reflects the sky and has filled my house with bright light. It’s the week­end and I’m awake.

Banana smoothie

Banana smoothie

I’ve fall­en in love with smooth­ies. They are usu­al­ly com­prised of three bananas, three tan­ger­ines, a third of a pineap­ple, yogurt, juice, and frozen 4‑fruit berry or sum­mer fruit sal­ad. I have three a day. This makes me poo like crazy.

Life has been exhaust­ing­ly busy. The pho­to ses­sions are over, post-pro­cess­ing is done, and my pic­tures are all print­ed. The only thing left is to get them framed. I had my first ses­sion with my psy­chol­o­gist. I’m can­celling my Tai Chi tomor­row. I have to plan my relax­ation, and this does­n’t make it very relax­ing.

This week­end I hope to:

  • catch up on my e‑mails
  • fill out a bunch of forms my psy­chol­o­gist gave me, includ­ing a mul­ti­modal life his­to­ry inven­to­ry
  • order some Moo cards
  • work on a clien­t’s web­site
  • add a photography/portfolio sec­tion to my site
  • fit some fun in there some­where

Next week is going to be even more crazy, no pun intend­ed. Monday I’m meet­ing with the framer, Tuesday and Thursday I have Tai Chi, Wednesday I’m hav­ing din­ner at the gallery and meet­ing the oth­er artists.

I haven’t been sleep­ing well. In the midst of all this socia­bil­i­ty, I’ve been bat­tling my anx­i­ety. It’s filled me with a qui­et deter­mi­na­tion, but the long expo­sure has worn me down.

Overflow

When a man is full, what can he do?

Burst.

—Zorba, the Greek

Or in my case, over­flow.

I start­ed cry­ing in class. Thankfully, no one noticed. People can get awk­ward around a crier. Unfortunately, sup­press­ing a good cry is as unsat­is­fy­ing as sti­fling a sneeze.

A lot of peo­ple hav­ing been say­ing the wrong things to me late­ly. On top of that, the abun­dance of inter­ac­tion I have with peo­ple — a side-effect of my projects — is leav­ing me drained and over­stim­u­lat­ed.

Sometimes I won­der if it’s in my nature to be emo­tion­al. That try­ing to change this is like try­ing to teach a bird not to sing.

I don’t even have time to deal with this. I have to put it all aside, because there are more impor­tant things to think about right now.

At the bus stop, I real­ized that I have a ten­den­cy to brood. I don’t lis­ten to hap­py songs to get me out of the mood. It’s all minor keys and lemon peels, so I can help it run its course.

It’s been a rough week.

Sometimes, a part of myself spills out.

A Pat On The Back

It was one of those days at work. Things weren’t exact­ly going wrong per se, but it was stress­ful enough as it was. People were all over me, want­i­ng this or that, under­min­ing my deci­sions, inter­rupt­ing my con­ver­sa­tions, run­ning around like their heads were cut off.

I kept remind­ing myself to breathe deeply (from the feet, as the Taoist sages are often described as doing) and calm­ly, kept think­ing about the word tat­tooed on my wrist, and it worked for a while.

By 3:15, I had to get out of the build­ing. It was sup­posed to be a three-song walk, but it end­ed up being nine. I did­n’t even bring my coat; I was burn­ing so much inside, that I did­n’t need it. The win­ter slushed creeped up my jeans by six inch­es, but thank­ful­ly no one noticed.

Tyler was leav­ing as I was step­ping back into the office. He invit­ed me to an art show at Bablyon tomor­row1. I told him that I’d think about it, know­ing in my head that I would­n’t go.

I had to stay late to work on the serv­er. Fifteen min­utes lat­er, Tyler walked into my office (he must have walked part way, then turned around) and asked if I was alright. Admittedly, I’ve nev­er been able to hide my moods very well, but I thought I was doing a decent job of it2. He told me he could feel that my ener­gy was low, so he asked if I want­ed a hug. I polite­ly declined, not because I did­n’t appre­ci­ate the ges­ture, but because I did­n’t think it would have helped. He gave me a firm pat on the back any­way and stepped out of my office.

And it helped more than I ever would have expect­ed.

  1. Which is strange, because the last thing I went to see at Babylon was a Dwarves con­cert [↩]
  2. Something of an old habit of mine. Not being able to hide my moods is often a bless­ing in dis­guise for me, because it com­mu­ni­cates to peo­ple that some­thing is wrong. Otherwise, they’d nev­er know, and it would nev­er be fixed. [↩]

New Years '08

An hour to the new year, and I’m in the train sta­tion.

Trying not to throw up. Trying not to think about meet­ing new peo­ple. Trying not to think of hav­ing to see peo­ple I hate.

One of the sta­tion doors is propped open, but there isn’t a sin­gle per­son inside. The sta­tion, nor­mal­ly bustling, is emp­ty, with just the buzz of the lights to fill the emp­ty space. Not even a wait­ing taxi out­side. Everything ster­ile as a hos­pi­tal. I want­ed to take a pic­ture, but I could bare­ly move, so I pulled out my note­book and man­aged to scrib­ble two words:

It's quiet

Another debil­i­tat­ing pan­ic attack.

Pat and Jen’s par­ty was post­poned, so I had already decid­ed to stay home. It was ten when Aaron called me to go over1.

Halfway through the bus ride, I was filled with a sud­den rush of anx­i­ety. Maybe it was the peo­ple on the bus, or the fact that I was­n’t men­tal­ly pre­pared to be at a par­ty. I could­n’t breathe, yet I was hyper­ven­ti­lat­ing.

I had to get off at the next stop, which turned out to be the train sta­tion. As I sat inside, the anx­i­ety would pass in a cou­ple min­utes, then come back in a wave as strong as before. I called Aaron and told him I was going to head home, but he insist­ed, so he sent Rob and Doug to pick me up.

I arrived drained and exhaust­ed. It was a hell­ish night.

I can only hope the rest of the year goes bet­ter than this.

  1. The only way I found out about the New Year’s par­ty was from Rob’s com­ment. Aaron nev­er told me about it him­self, so I was­n’t going to pre­sume that I was invit­ed, because I nev­er take my friend­ships for grant­ed. [↩]