Posts in category "Daily Life"

Family Tied

Over ten years ago, I lived at my aun­t’s house for about four months in the sum­mer. Much of my mater­nal fam­i­ly was vis­it­ing from Hong Kong, so every­one stayed there as a cen­tral loca­tion.

One day my par­ents had a blow-out. It was triv­ial, as always. As a result, from my mom’s side of the sto­ry, he went out with anoth­er woman that night. From his side, my mom tried to kill him with a steak knife. It cut his fin­ger to the bone when he was defend­ing him­self. The next day, with swollen eyes and a weak voice, my mom showed me the yel­low bruis­es down her arm. They had to be pho­tographed by the police as evi­dence before they healed. Two sub­poe­na’s lat­er and they were bet­ter than new, for the next few months at least until the next fight.

This is the last mem­o­ry I have of my aun­t’s house. I haven’t been back since. Not until this week­end.

Now every­one from my mater­nal side is here, all my mom’s sib­lings and their respec­tive fam­i­lies. It start­ed out as an act of com­mis­er­a­tion, to help her out dur­ing the divorce. Aunt, uncle, and son, aunt, uncle, and son, aunt and uncle. And then there’s me, with my mom. Without father. The only bro­ken fam­i­ly.

At first I think it’s just a coin­ci­dence. My aunt and uncle have the same vac­u­um clean­er that we had, the same piano, the same brown cowhide cor­ner sofa. And then it clicks. Since the divorce, my mom sold the house after buy­ing out my father of the con­tents. Everything is stored here until she moves into her new house, from the base­ment to the fam­i­ly room, from the kitchen to the bath­room.

My child­hood is strewn across every floor. The fam­i­ly pho­tos. My old fin­ger-paint­ed, art­work from ele­men­tary school. My dad did­n’t want any of it.

I need to get out of here.

I need to get the fuck out of here.

Autumn Recall

Fall approach­es. The trees have yet to shift their colours along the spec­trum, but the tem­per­a­ture has begun to drop. Even when the air is calm it’s a play­ful shiv­er down the spine.

One of my favourite things to do around this time of year, before I quit, would be some wake and bake to start the day. After smok­ing a joint, I’d open the win­dows, turn up the music, and let the breeze drift inside. Sometimes I would go for a walk with my iPod before the sun ful­ly showed itself. When the beat was right, the hard­est thing to do was not to move my body to the music, to groove embar­ras­ing­ly, and grind and sing and twirl.

With enough weed in the lungs, any­one will dance.

I won’t say that I don’t miss that lifestyle, because it was a way I could view things from a dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive. My thoughts would run freely on those ear­ly autumn walks. Music would sound bet­ter. Girls, cov­er­ing up in sweaters and long sleeves, would look nicer. It was a pre­scrip­tion I would need every week.

The expe­ri­ence isn’t the same until it’s this time of the year. Smothering sum­mer heat dulls the sens­es. Winter over­stim­u­lates them into sobri­ety, and even after a full bowl, all one can feel is cold. It’s only in the fall, in the per­fect weath­er, that brings one to ones’ sens­es. The green air, full of that cold con­crete smell, gives a rush to the head.

Until I walked out­side this morn­ing, with !!! pound­ing in my ears, I nev­er thought I could feel this way again.

The approach of fall has brought this back to me.

The Beginning To The End

This was the week­end we first met.

The first time we kissed. The first time we held each oth­er. The first time we slept with arms entwined, bod­ies bare and buried under the cov­ers.

It was before the snow melt­ed on the verge of spring, when I would open the win­dows to dry the sweat from our skin.

I put on a song that made me cry, because she said that it turned her on, and with the tears welling up in my lids, we stared into each oth­ers’ eyes.

From the moment we touched, there was nev­er any awk­ward­ness. Only a com­plete trust, a com­fort­ing famil­iar­i­ty, as if we’d known each oth­er for years, a gen­tle nuz­zle of the nose from my baby-faced doll.

And now it’s over.

Someone who saw this video sent me this very touch­ing let­ter about her sto­ry of rape and recov­ery.

Musical Context

For years, I lis­tened to music based on my mood. Playlists were well suit­ed for this. I had one full of sad songs for my sad days, days that would last months at a time. I had one with only quick-paced, aggres­sive gui­tar riffs and lung-spit­ting screams, for the pock­ets of rage I’d encounter every now and then. One that was most­ly elec­tron­ic inspi­ra­tion — songs that would move me when I need­ed to move. One for the par­tic­u­lar­ly dif­fi­cult days, con­sist­ing of sto­ic melodies that could fill me with grit deter­mi­na­tion. There was even one for the bit­ter­sweet moments, per­fect for a post-show buzz. Every song served a par­tic­u­lar pur­pose.

This mot­ley group­ing of sin­gle tracks may have been the result of the way I dis­cov­ered new music. Tenaciously, with ears always open, I would record as much as I could that caught my fan­cy, jot­ting down any dis­cernible lyrics I could use as a basis for a search, and nev­er stop­ping until I could find the song. Hysteria, by Muse, is just one exam­ple, which I hap­pened to dis­cov­er while watch­ing an awards show. For a long time, it remained a song I’ve enjoyed on my for it’s sub­tle build-up, and ener­getic, near­ly chaot­ic, synth-inspired bass lines.

Things changed when I lived with Trolley. He exposed me to bands of dif­fer­ent gen­res, and being a musi­cal col­lec­tor, this expo­sure took the form of com­plete albums. One of them hap­pened to be Absolution.

Now that I have the entire album, Hysteria is known to me as track 7, com­ing after the pen­sive Interlude, but before the gen­tle, ethe­re­al, Blackout. In this con­text, pre­ced­ed and suc­ceed­ed by two equal­ly sig­nif­i­cant tracks, the song does­n’t sound the same.

Eventually, none of my playlists were appro­pri­ate for what I was feel­ing. At first, I thought that this was the result of increas­ing­ly sub­tle or com­plex emo­tions, but I’ve come to real­ize that it’s sim­ply because I’ve matured, and as a result, my emo­tions have evened out. With the wis­dom and seren­i­ty asso­ci­at­ed with grow­ing old­er, came the loss of emo­tion­al highs and lows that would inspire me.

Now it’s become dif­fi­cult to lis­ten to a song in a playlist. Every album has an order. Every track has its place. Listening to a song out of its musi­cal con­text may be hard, but lis­ten­ing to music with­out the rush of inspi­ra­tion is hard­er.

And this has become my musi­cal con­text.

There's Never Enough Time

New lay­out. Back to my old grayscale style, because that’s how I’ve been feel­ing late­ly. Neutral. Took me about three days, most­ly from scratch. I was sat­is­fied with the old one, until two months ago, when I began read­ing sev­er­al design/typography/colour books at work. The pow­ers that be let me spend around $300 on edu­ca­tion­al mate­r­i­al, and as I explored each one with fer­vor and thirst, I began to notice all the fun­da­men­tal design mis­takes I made. Ignorance is bliss.

It’s Friday night, and with my legs curled under me, Dolly sniffs at my feet, look­ing for an oppor­tune space on my lap. Fall is approach­ing. The win­dow in my room remains open as soon as the sun sets. I’ve been over­whelm­ing­ly busy, and as a result, I haven’t quite caught up on any sleep in the last two weeks.