Posts in category "Photos"

One Man's Sip

Glasses on the windowsill

I final­ly print­ed off my pic­ture of the glass­es on the sill and framed it, which is quite some­thing con­sid­er­ing the fact that I have bare­ly any dec­o­ra­tions in my room. I was lucky enough to have been giv­en a nice met­al frame as a Christmas gift a few years ago, but have not had a decent pic­ture to put in it. Since I don’t have a career going yet, I try to keep a min­i­mal­is­tic amount of fur­ni­ture until I can afford to invest in long term sets, and for now the pic­ture rests on my cof­fee table. I want­ed a phys­i­cal man­i­fes­ta­tion of the image because of the poignan­cy it evokes in me.

Every time I look at it I can’t help but think of the morn­ing sun seep­ing through the cracks of blue venet­ian blinds, of the flour­ish of green leaves out­side the win­dow. I think of lying on a swollen bed with my back to the wall, notic­ing the bright­ness of the sun fill the room, talk­ing well past the break of day. I think of sleep­ing next to some­one, hold­ing her head, draw­ing on her face, see­ing the ear­ly light bring out the sun­flow­ers in her eyes. I remem­ber how we’d go to sleep, plac­ing our frames on the win­dowsill before suc­cumb­ing to exhaus­tion.

Perhaps I’m so affect­ed by this image, this bit­ter­sweet mem­o­ry, because of how much I rel­ish the act of sleep­ing next to some­one. One of my favourite parts of a rela­tion­ship is being able to hold some­one before los­ing con­scious­ness. I sup­pose it betrays a vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty, a cer­tain unpar­al­leled inti­ma­cy, and vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty is some­thing that I’ve always been attract­ed to.

But how odd it is that this may mean so much to me, yet mean so lit­tle to anoth­er. That even some­one shar­ing this expe­ri­ence with me may think of it in pass­ing, as some ephemer­al expe­ri­ence, not worth remem­ber­ing.

What do we take with our­selves when we fall apart? Do we keep the mem­o­ries or the emo­tions? Do we only take the good and leave the bad?

With this pic­ture I try to take every­thing. I don’t want to hide from hurt, I don’t want to neglect any feel­ings. I choose to see the image as a beau­ti­ful thing, a frame in time when I felt some­thing greater than most things I’ve felt in my life. I try to turn the pain into pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and gain from my expe­ri­ence. I look at this pic­ture and become affect­ed by every­thing it means to me.

Even if it means noth­ing to any­one else.

The Risk Of Home Furnishing Stores

Going to places like Ikea, Zone, or Varia is always a risk for me. My cur­rent set of fur­ni­ture is rather uneclec­tic, under­stand­ably so, since I plan on invest­ing in much bet­ter pieces once I have a per­ma­nent res­i­dence. Of course, find­ing such a place may take as long as a decade, so I may be stuck with my cheap fur­ni­ture for a while. I was con­sid­er­ing the pur­chase of a lux­u­ry com­put­er chair, but being unem­ployed makes me rather fru­gal. Walking into Zone is like walk­ing into a brushed alu­minum and glass par­adise. I usu­al­ly get tempt­ed to tell the sales­per­son to pack up a room of sil­very pieces and ship it to my apart­ment. Every time I walk by Nick’s room, I become tempt­ed to redec­o­rate my own, see­ing as how he has a match­ing futon, dress­er, com­put­er desk, and chair. My room lacks per­son­al­i­ty, although the light­ing is now at a state that I can be com­fort­able.

The Cat Gets Fatter

I bought Dolores anoth­er toy, con­sist­ing of a sisal cylin­der with a spring-loaded, bell-attached fuzzy ball. The cylin­der dou­bles as a con­tain­er for cat­nip, and for only a cou­ple dol­lars, was a decent find. I also bought a small bag of wet cat food in gravy as a treat. After smelling this gourmet food, I’m now deter­mined that all cat food has the same unique “cat food smell”, the way garbage has the uni­ver­sal “garbage smell”, whether some­one throws out the last bites of his filet mignon or the moldy remains of her KD.

Dolly before

Dolly after

As Trolley has most apt­ly noticed, Dolly is now devel­op­ing a gut, and her once lithe fig­ure is accom­pa­nied by a soft bel­ly of sorts. As can be seen in these before and after pho­tos, the gut pro­trudes most dis­tinct­ly from the neu­tral sit­ting posi­tion, and now cov­ers up the hind legs.

Politics

Camping beach

Trolley shivers

Campfire

I got back from camp­ing on Monday, and had a great time. We went up as a group of 16, divid­ed into three sites. I resumed my role as the token Chinese guy, since I was the only one on the entire camp­ground. The sites were less than a three minute walk away from each oth­er. Activities con­sist­ed of bad­minton, ulti­mate fris­bee, read­ing, or just loung­ing. It was 20 degrees dur­ing the day so a lot of the time was spent in the shade. At night it dropped down to about 8 degrees, leav­ing most peo­ple shiv­er­ing in their sleep­ing bags or hud­dled around a camp­fire.

Some tried to swim, but the water was so cold that they end­ed up wad­ing. There was a com­pe­ti­tion every day to see who could stay neck deep in the water the longest, but they all end­ed in ties when every­one agreed that the idea was sil­ly and that suf­fer­ing through the icy water was not worth the poten­tial brag­ging rights.

camping drinks

Most peo­ple brought quite a bit of alco­hol (Wheaties actu­al­ly got a 2–8 just for him­self), and we were caught twice on the first night for hav­ing open alco­hol con­tain­ers off the sites. Fortunately, it was by two dif­fer­ent groups of rangers, so we got two warn­ings, instead of a warn­ing and then a fine with evic­tion.

Even when relax­ing on the camp­ground, with no time lim­its and no sched­ules, I dis­cov­ered that pol­i­tics had fol­lowed me there, to a place where one is sup­posed to for­get the stress and con­flicts of dai­ly life. It’s such a pity that life can be so com­pli­cat­ed in the midst of such serene sim­plic­i­ty, when the only thing that one should wor­ry about is how much beer one has left or whether a fire will be going in time for din­ner.

Something that I’ve long real­ized is that the pol­i­tics of life are every­where, most­ly preva­lent in uncom­mu­nica­tive or secre­tive sit­u­a­tions. An uncer­tain attrac­tion, a group of peo­ple with mutu­al dis­like for some­one, or per­haps even var­ied appro­pri­ate­ness in var­ied com­pa­ny are all typ­i­cal exam­ples I’ve most com­mon­ly run across and dealt with.

I always try to remain out of such com­plex affairs, in order to sim­pli­fy my life, in order to have clar­i­ty. By doing so, I find that things are much less uncer­tain, and I thus have less to wor­ry about. Of course, life thrusts me into such sit­u­a­tions whether I’m will­ing to par­tic­i­pate or not. After all, peo­ple will for­ev­er be upset by oth­ers. I find that I’ve been able to under­stand and sur­vive these sit­u­a­tions with increas­ing con­sis­ten­cy.

It’s quite a dif­fer­ent sto­ry when I am per­son­al­ly involved.