Pregasaurus

Pregnant with hope

Tiana asked me to take some pic­tures of her dur­ing her preg­nan­cy so she could have a record of what her body looks like com­pared to the rockin’ body it was before. In return, she posed for some oth­er projects I had in mind.

Pregnant body

It was an exer­cise in colour tones and mood. As I’m get­ting more com­fort­able in work­ing with RAW files, I want­ed to try my hand at adjust­ing tint, expo­sure, sat­u­ra­tion, and con­trast.

At one point I asked her how to spell “pre­gasaurus” (a term she came up with to encap­su­late her girth), and she remind­ed me that it was a made-up word, with no com­mon­ly accept­ed way of spelling it.

Pregnant and sleeping

The media makes preg­nan­cy out to be such a glam­orous affair, with design­er clothes and celebri­ty births, that it seems to be dele­te­ri­ous­ly affect­ing the younger gen­er­a­tion. I want­ed to por­tray preg­nan­cy in a much more casu­al, nat­ur­al light. Hence the ghet­to T‑shirt and the bel­ly stick­ing out.

Pregnant eating poutine

Thanks goes to Tiana for not only get­ting nude for me, but for being so pho­to­genic at eight months through the preg­nan­cy, and work­ing with me on these ideas.

Randomness and Disconnection

So much to say in my head, but when I sit down, it all dis­ap­pears. It’s as if being in front of a blank page, with the all the pos­si­bil­i­ties before me, is cathar­sis enough.

Many things to do has left me with lit­tle time to write. A trip to Toronto for the long week­end means I have to make sure all my bat­ter­ies are charged (one for the dig­i­tal cam­era, two for the HD cam­corder, three sets for the flash­es), and my mem­o­ry cards (two for the dig­i­tal cam­era, two for the HD cam­corder) are cleared.

Thunder has inter­rupt­ed this post. I opened up the blinds to see the rain­fall, and the light from the street lamps has come spilling into the room. This makes me real­ize that the hot choco­late can­dle Shirley gave me for Christmas, along with the glare of my Macbook Pro screen, weren’t doing a great job of illu­mi­nat­ing my writ­ing nook. I had Thrice play­ing, but have turned it down so I can hear the sheets of water pour­ing through the street.

Got a bunch of stuff done tonight. While pick­ing up some gro­ceries, I was served by a book­ish girl with braces. She had a dis­tinct lisp, but car­ried on ebul­lient­ly as if she had the most beau­ti­ful voice in the world. Later on, as I walked through the mall, I caught this Katherine-with-a‑K slouched back in a seat in the food court, eat­ing din­ner with one arm in her lap. It remind­ed me of an entry I wrote about a girl doing the same thing six years ago. How I wish for that kind of peace and seren­i­ty. How long ago that was (uni­ver­si­ty!). How dif­fer­ent I was back then.

Been feel­ing very aloof late­ly. Not sure if it’s me, or some­thing my mind is doing to pro­tect itself. Maybe it’s a way of dis­con­nect­ing myself from the world. I must need it right now. This after­noon I was read­ing from a book of Tai Chi clas­sics Louise bought me, and found one part par­tic­u­lar­ly fit­ting1: “Do not be con­cerned with form. Do not be con­cerned with the ways in which form man­i­fests. It is best to for­get your own exis­tence”.

  1. Listed as the first of the Eight Truths of Tai Chi. [↩]

She Is The Water, I Am The Waves

Her waves

She is the light, I am the prism.

She is the words, I am the voice.

She is the vio­la string, I am the vibra­tion.

She is the bud, I am the bloom.

She is the life, I am the liv­ing.

She is the heart, I am the pulse.

She is the medi­um, I am the mes­sage.

She is the water, I am the waves.

Blood Work

Vial of blood

This lit­tle vial, along with a few drops of anti-coag­u­lant, is filled with blood. My blood. I need­ed some for a pho­tog­ra­phy project I’m work­ing on, so I got a friend of mine in the med­ical indus­try to take it from me.

Now I’ve both fig­u­ra­tive­ly and lit­er­al­ly bled for my work.

I Wanna Hold Your Hand (In The Car)

When I was young, the only affec­tion my par­ents ever showed for each oth­er was occa­sion­al­ly (maybe five times ever) hold­ing hands in the car. They nev­er kissed, nev­er hugged, nev­er said “I love you”. Aside from sit­ting down to eat din­ner, their lives were com­plete­ly sep­a­rate. They would­n’t even sleep in the same room.

Now that I have a car, hold­ing hands while dri­ving has come to define a rela­tion­ship for me. I leave my right hand on the shifter, tap­ping it to the beat of my music, but I always have this urge to hold some­one’s hand, as if it’s some strange ide­al I’ve nev­er been able to expe­ri­ence.