Posts in category "Photos"

See you in France

Got a tick­et booked for France in the Fall. Instead of stay­ing in Paris, I’m going to be liv­ing with Frédéric and Misun in the town of Chartres. That way I’ll save mon­ey on acco­mo­da­tions, since the train goes to Paris every hour, only takes an hour, and is much cheap­er than a night for a hotel there.

With three weeks booked, I know I’ll be able to go at my own pace in the city, with plen­ty of time to spend with Frédéric, Misun, and the boys too.

books on France

These three Frommer’s books came in one pack. I was hap­py to find one that focused on Paris alone.

My French com­pre­hen­sion has rust­ed to the point of being non-exis­tent, so the dic­tio­nary and phrase book seemed like a good idea too. It’s filled with hilar­i­ous pho­net­ic pro­nun­ci­a­tions, like “ehs-kuh tueh praw~ lah peel-uel” for “Est-ce que tu prends la pil­lule?” or “Are you on birth con­trol?” in the Getting Intimate sec­tion. I would­n’t be sur­prised if Paris was the only city to have this sec­tion, which includes trans­la­tions for “Harder!”, “Faster!”, “Deeper!”, and “May I come inside?” (although I sus­pect the last one isn’t exact­ly the mean­ing I’m think­ing).

Paris Moleskine

I also bought this Paris Moleskine, embossed with the city’s name on the spine. It’s over­priced for a note­book, but worth it for the con­ve­nience. Contains con­densed ver­sions of all the most use­ful infor­ma­tion, includ­ing num­bers for trans­porta­tion com­pa­nies (includ­ing air bal­loon!) and city maps.

More sta­tion­ary porn beneath the cut

Baby talk

One sum­mer in my teenage years, I vol­un­teered at a kinder camp1, and that filled a gap in my knowl­edge about any­one under 10. Unfortunately, that gap only spanned chil­dren between 3 and 5, and aside from that range, I knew noth­ing about kids.

So inter­act­ing with chil­dren who’ve yet learned to speak I found espe­cial­ly awk­ward. I nev­er under­stood how to talk to some­one who did­n’t seem to under­stand what I was say­ing. It was like talk­ing to a stuffed ani­mal, which I’m pret­ty sure can’t be done by any sane per­son with­out feel­ing creepy.

Rosella in the car

 

Not to men­tion how pho­ny it sounds. Why do peo­ple raise their voic­es, as if a child trusts them more if they sound like them2? They don’t nor­mal­ly talk like that.

Then I real­ized that I do kit­ty talk, with the boospy, and the schmoop­sy, and the pokey of the bel­ly. I talk to my cat all the time, a habit I’ve prob­a­bly picked up from liv­ing by myself for the last three years, com­bined with the fact that I’m an extreme intro­vert and stay in my house for the major­i­ty of my time.

Which is strange because Dolly does­n’t under­stand any­thing I’m say­ing (though I’m sure cats are intel­li­gent enough to evolve to talk if they believed any­thing a human had to say could be impor­tant). And this is after I wrote an entry sev­en years ago, specif­i­cal­ly about how awk­ward I found it to talk­ing to cats.

Maybe I’m com­fort­able enough with cats now to hold a con­ver­sa­tion with one. Or maybe I’m going crazy.

Rosella with tongue out

 

I’m get­ting more com­fort­able with kids too. Not just talk­ing to them, but the idea of hav­ing them myself, maybe because my friends are get­ting mar­ried and giv­ing birth and I’m spend­ing more time with a few adorable boys and girls. I can talk to them even though they only respond in mono­syl­la­bles.

Jodie Foster once described hav­ing chil­dren as the most cre­ative thing she’s ever done, and I com­plete­ly under­stand that now. I can’t think of any­thing more cre­ative than nur­tur­ing growth, curios­i­ty, imag­i­na­tion, and ideas in anoth­er human being. One day, I’d like to expe­ri­ence it for myself.

  1. Cause I had noth­ing bet­ter to do. Seriously. [↩]
  2. Though it worked for Owen Meany. [↩]

29 7/12: The Taoist

I got these tat­toos to remind myself to stay on the path. A reminder like this is some­thing of a para­dox; to be on the path is to be unaware of the path.

Even though I strong­ly believed in the tenets of Taoism, I still found myself off the path more often than on it. There was a point where I began to ques­tion whether I was tru­ly a Taoist or just a Tao-enthu­si­ast, because my under­stand­ing of the ideas did­n’t nec­es­sar­i­ly mean an abil­i­ty to apply them to my life.

Self portrait at 29 7/12

 

But over time, I for­got about my tat­toos. Or, should I say, I stopped think­ing about them, the way one may be so accus­tomed to the nose on one’s face as to nev­er dwell on the idea of it’s exis­tence.

In the same way, I’ve for­got­ten about the path too, even though I know I’m on it. I don’t seek coun­cil from the Tao Te Ching nowa­days, because there’s noth­ing left that I don’t under­stand. I found the feel­ing of seren­i­ty I’d been seek­ing for so long.

I turn 30 in five months, and I final­ly believe I’m a Taoist.

The Turning 30 Series

Home early

After a night of camp­ing, I’m home more than a day ear­ly. The unre­lent­ing rain and insects were enough for me to won­der whether it’s worth for­go­ing the com­forts of home (and rest, and clean­li­ness) for a few new sub­jects to pho­to­graph.

I now have sev­er­al mos­qui­to bites on my body, about the size of my fist each. This is with­out any scratch­ing on my part, and they’re steadi­ly grow­ing. My skin has always react­ed bad­ly to mos­qui­to bites. I’m pret­ty sure I’d have to turn down National Geographic if they ever offered me a job as a wildlife pho­tog­ra­ph­er.

hugs

 

Jesse Dangerously — Halifax Rap Legend (Live @ Zaphod Beeblebrox)

The last stop of the 1000 Crooked Miles was right here at Zaphod’s in Ottawa. The last song of the night was Jesse’s (who was head­lin­ing) with a per­for­mance of Halifax Rap Legend, the beat tak­en from his upcom­ing album.

I know of no oth­er rap­per who can use the expres­sion “rest­ing on your lau­rels” in their rhymes. I sus­pect this is why MC Chris once named him as the only rap­per he liked.

hugs

Hugs after the show.