Posts in category "Random"

suddenly everything has changed

I know you can’t save me from what’s about to hap­pen, but I’m tired of being strong for myself. Tired of not hav­ing you in my life. Tired of try­ing to not think about you. And as ter­ri­fy­ing as the future is now, you know I’m not a hyp­ocrite, and I know it would­n’t be fair to either of us.

Sometimes I take the bus, walk our paths, sit in our old haunts. Hoping to catch you at a dis­tance, so I can see how you’re wear­ing your hair and know you’re okay. Strangers on a train, hop­ing in my head that you’d sit and talk to me so we can laugh and cry and cry and laugh about it all.

Sometimes I find these pic­tures of you I don’t remem­ber tak­ing, in glass­es I don’t remem­ber you ever wear­ing, in places I don’t rec­og­nize. A strange gap in my mind in an oth­er­wise vivid set of expe­ri­ences, and I won­der if on that day our bod­ies ever touched.

And while I’m sure some would blame these thoughts on the sea­son or the breakup, the sim­ple truth is I nev­er real­ized how alone I was until the phone rang today, and I haven’t tak­en a breath since.

Elizabeth and Jane promo video

I was very excit­ed to be work­ing with Liz again when approached me to shoot a pro­mo video for her pho­tog­ra­phy busi­ness. Since she does engage­ments, wed­dings, and pet por­traits, we decid­ed to film all three types of ses­sions.

Liz lists some of her favourite things as her hub­by, her pups1, her shoes, and her Apple prod­ucts, so I includ­ed lit­tle bits of each to give it a per­son­al touch. I also kept the grad­ing crisp and clean with colours that pop out of the screen to match Liz’s style of vibrant pho­tog­ra­phy, of which I’m a huge fan. My main goal, how­ev­er, was show how fun it is to be one of her sub­jects because she has a per­pet­u­al smile and bub­bly per­son­al­i­ty that puts any­one at ease.

  1. She’s Ottawa’s own dog-whis­per­er, and it may be safe to say that she loves dogs as much as I love cats, per­haps even a lit­tle more. [↩]

the things we carry

I can’t fig­ure out why I’m so moody late­ly. Maybe it’s been too long since I smelled the wood of my gui­tar. Maybe it’s the fresh Autumn colours that tend to mag­ni­fy my emo­tions. Maybe I’m feel­ing over­worked, over­stim­u­lat­ed, and too rarely under­stood. Maybe it’s because I haven’t had a moment to myself in what feels like weeks, with so many feel­ings of lone­li­ness amongst so many peo­ple.

Autumn stream

 

I always think of exile in times like this, and in par­tic­u­lar, a stan­za from Yevgeniy Onegin:

From all that to the heart is dear
then did I tear my heart away;
to every­one a stranger, tied by noth­ing,
I thought; lib­er­ty and peace
would serve instead of hap­pi­ness.

Luckily, I’ve been read­ing The Poisonwood Bible, which reminds me that the only prob­lems I have are first-world prob­lems, and that I’m rich in ways many will nev­er be.

I find it amaz­ing, the immen­si­ty of it, how any sin­gle per­son can be respon­si­ble for a tome of such rich sto­ry­telling, obser­va­tion, and wit. It’s the only book I’ve picked up in years, and I only start­ed read­ing to get into her head as much as pos­si­ble (and piqued by my curios­i­ty on how she could describe a sto­ry of the Belgian Congo as sexy). Unsurprisingly, her favourite char­ac­ter is the strong, faith­ful, war­rior daugh­ter. Mine is like me too; the dark, brood­ing, intel­lec­tu­al child, dizy­got­ic twin to hers. It makes me won­der if lik­ing one char­ac­ter over all oth­ers is too often an exer­cise in van­i­ty.

In the end, Onegin real­izes he was wrong about exile, that he could­n’t fill him­self with empti­ness to replace the sad­ness, some­thing he only fig­ures out when he finds some­one worth lov­ing. That’s what’s pulling me back too, keep­ing me ground­ed amongst those dark moments of untem­pered emo­tion. I car­ry the image of her smile with me, the only thing as dis­tin­guished on her face as her Spanish eyes, and the rea­son I call her Cheeks from the way the flesh pulls up to round her face. I’ve stud­ied this smile for so long that I can see it every time I close my eyes, and with that, I car­ry a strength of my own too.

Byron

Kitties are impos­si­ble to resist when you see them in every oth­er viral video doing some­thing hilar­i­ous or clever or just plain cute, and my plan to wait until life set­tled down a bit before adopt­ing anoth­er one was as dif­fi­cult as the inten­tions were noble.

I’ve had Byron for about a month now, and he’s already been a great com­pan­ion. He has­n’t warmed up to sleep­ing with me at night, but he fre­quent­ly sleeps in my lap, and fol­lows me around the house, even going so far as to lie on the bath­mat to watch me when­ev­er I’m mak­ing a nice BM. He also rarely stops mov­ing, which makes him espe­cial­ly dif­fi­cult to pho­to­graph. Like Dolly, he can be quite a vocal cat, and will meow repeat­ed­ly when he knows he’s about to be fed or if I call his name.

cat on a couch

 

I can tell he’s already grown in the short time I’ve had him. It’s always fun to see how all the parts of kit­ties devel­op at dif­fer­ent rates; right now he has big ears and a full tail, though his big mitts are more like­ly due to his breed. His face is also quite mature, though it isn’t par­tic­u­lar­ly strik­ing or unique.

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