Posts in category "Photos"

until tomorrow

The days go on con­tin­u­ous­ly, mea­sured in beats-per-minute. Winter’s here in all it’s bright glo­ry, but the sun sets a lit­tle lat­er every day, mark­ing the change of sea­sons. It’s the only way for me to keep track of the pass­ing time.

So many days are spent alone, yet I don’t feel lone­ly. The only prob­lem with iso­la­tion is that it lets me spend too much time with my own thoughts. This, com­bined with my intro­vert­ed ten­den­cies (which means my stim­u­la­tion comes from mem­o­ries), makes me feel like I’m trapped in the past. I sup­pose it’s not all bad, but it cer­tain­ly does make it hard­er for me to heal.

Bronwen puts on makeup

 

I don’t know what to write. There isn’t the same strug­gle or need to vent. I find myself sit­ting and star­ing at a blank screen for hours at a time. It’s not like I feel the need to say some­thing for the sake of it. There are still thoughts and ideas that linger, things to get off my chest, but they’re either too too sim­ple to men­tion, or too com­plex to put down.

It’s strange to see this path laid out before me. I could wan­der off and explore new things, but I’m still too com­fort­able.

Things don’t change, but I don’t think I mind so much any­more.

Larissa — Takamine F370SS

I sup­pose I should make a for­mal intro­duc­tion.

My dad knew I was look­ing for a gui­tar so I could start teach­ing myself, and his co-work­er’s daugh­ter hap­pened to be sell­ing hers. I decid­ed not to buy it cause I had no idea what it was, not to men­tion the fact that I’m noto­ri­ous­ly picky about these kinds of things. He bought me the gui­tar any­way (using my birth­day as an excuse), and I drove to Toronto to pick it up the first chance I had when I got back from Europe.

I asked Steve to do a demo of the gui­tar because his skills can real­ly show it off.

Takamine F370SS: guitar front

Takamine F370SS sol­id wood acoustic dread­nought.

It turns out the gui­tar is absolute­ly gor­geous, with sol­id spruce on top and sol­id koa on the back and sides. And being hand­made in Japan in 1999 — the only year this mod­el was in pro­duc­tion — makes it an instru­ment that will nev­er be replaced. An heir­loom I’ll pass down to my chil­dren if I ever have any.

Continue read­ing “Larissa — Takamine F370SS”…

And I shall call him Leonard and he shall be mine

I was going to wait to see how his per­son­al­i­ty devel­oped before set­tling on a name, and for a while I was call­ing him Serge (after Gainsbourg) cause he was almost over­ly affec­tion­ate, con­stant­ly paw­ing me and rub­bing my face with his. Eventually, I real­ized it’d be impos­si­ble for a cat to live up to such name­sakes, so I went with my first choice, which was Leonard. It has Leo in it, which is per­fect for any­thing from the fel­i­dae fam­i­ly. I could nev­er call him Lenny though cause “Lenny Cohen” sounds so wrong to me.

Leonard the cat on Dolly

 

I love cats with goofy faces, and I can tell Leonard has a bit of one already from the way his cheeks puff out. I also like my cats fat cause there’s more to hold when they decide to crawl into the cov­ers. As nov­el as it is to see how tiny Leonard is in com­par­i­son to Dolly, I’m look­ing for­ward to see him putting on some more weight.

Unfortunately, Dolly’s per­son­al­i­ty has changed. She’s a bit less affec­tion­ate, less vocal, and more sick­ly; I’ve been deal­ing with per­pet­u­al res­pi­ra­to­ry infec­tions and eye abscess­es ever since I brought Leonard home. I’m won­der­ing if she asso­ciates being mis­er­ably sick with the arrival of the new kit­ten. Her mater­nal instincts seem to kick in when he lies next to her, and she’ll try to lick and groom him, but he does­n’t seem to like it much and they end up fight­ing. Hopefully, he’ll grow into the habit.

fourth show

It was a small open­ing set for a vernissage with a theme called Rumour Has It, fea­tur­ing forty artists in a bike store in Hintonburg.

Jesse had the set list planned around the whole rumour theme, and we start­ed learn­ing the songs when I showed up for rehearsal. But I only found out we were play­ing that night when my cal­en­dar alarm went off to say the show had start­ed. I thought we had an extra day at least to prac­tice, but due to a time zone bug in Google Calendar, the show was instead hap­pen­ing in two hours.

fourth show

Jesse’s dad with his trusty old Martin.

I was­n’t ready at all — men­tal­ly or musi­cal­ly — and if I’d have bailed if did­n’t have so much respect for Jesse, only because being under-pre­pared real­ly isn’t my style. It was worth it just to be a part of what must be the world’s first father-son cov­er of Piece of Me Britney Spears any­way, which end­ed up being a great clos­er for the set. I don’t think I’d be exag­ger­at­ing if I said the four peo­ple watch­ing us rocked their fuck­ing balls (and respec­tive tits) off.

stability or stagnancy

I’m liv­ing a dra­ma-free life.

____ used to tease me about my dra­ma, con­vinced that I loved it because I always seemed to be cre­at­ing it. But dra­ma is just a by-prod­uct of the strug­gle when you’re dis­cov­er­ing your­self and try­ing to become the per­son you’re meant to be. It’s nev­er an easy path; oth­er­wise, you’d already be that per­son.

I don’t have bad days any­more either, but I can’t tell if it’s because I’m han­dling things bet­ter or if I’m not chal­leng­ing myself enough.

And now that there’s no more dra­ma, it feels like I’m fin­ished. Like there’s no next step for me to take and nowhere else to go, because I’m here. All that’s left is to enjoy this exis­tence.

That’s not to say my life is with­out a touch of inner insta­bil­i­ty. I still have mem­o­ries, thoughts, lust, and love, and they’re enough to fill the mind for an entire day. But now I know every­thing’s gonna be okay.

cats in sunbeam

 

Now that I’m work­ing from home full-time, I bare­ly step out­side. Living like Foul Bachelor Frog, cause yes­ter­day’s pants are today’s pants if they have the belt in them. There’s noth­ing for me out there. It’s nev­er worth the trou­ble any­more. I’d go out if I was­n’t so con­tent in my com­fort­able home with two cats and every­thing I need to sing or write or cre­ate.

I’m just won­der­ing if I’ll ever get tired of this.