Posts tagged with "inspiration"

This is a picture I didn't take

Of you, arms up and chest out, body crash­ing against the surf. Top pulled back into place with each wave, bot­toms adjust­ed as need­ed. A splash of rain on a flower soon to bur­geon.

In that instance I became aware of what was hap­pen­ing in myself. I could look at it clear­ly, and saw it as it was because it was already there, part of my expe­ri­ence in that moment, for bet­ter or for worse. I allowed myself to be exact­ly as I was with­out fear or shame. Detached yet present. Mindful to how I’ve longed to feel this for some­one again, and how I’ve nev­er ful­ly sur­ren­dered myself to it until now. A rea­son for the lyrics in the awk­ward smiles, the molto crescen­do in every inci­den­tal touch.

This is a pic­ture I did­n’t take of you, a mem­o­ry from which I can’t seem to look away. A moment I car­ry with me to remind myself that I can love again.

a reason

In those moments between our­selves and the rest of the world, it’s hard to think of any­thing but how good you look with curls in your hair, and how you nev­er wor­ry about tear­ing your del­i­cate dusty-rose dress when you think it’ll look sus­pi­cious if we’re gone for too long.

I need moments like this — like good­night kiss­es and the things you tell your friends about me — all the lit­tle details so many take for grant­ed. That’s why I haven’t been able to write. Not because I’ve been too occu­pied with life, but because I’ve become numb to every­thing else, and inspi­ra­tion has always come from my capac­i­ty to feel.

So brush your hair behind your ear, take anoth­er walk with me, and give me a rea­son to speak to the world.

better living through chemistry

I can’t pin­point the exact moment I start­ed to feel bet­ter, which is a very pecu­liar feel­ing in itself. There has­n’t been any event to which I can attribute the fact that I’m not so anx­ious about how scary the future is any­more, or how I’m not depressed about every­thing that’s hap­pened. The only vari­able has been the med­ica­tion, which means it’s work­ing.

The side-effect that still affects me most is the insom­nia. I sleep for two hours, do some­thing mind­less for two hours, then go back to bed. Lather, rinse, repeat. I don’t feel rest­ed until night, at which point I’m soon ready to sleep again. It’s wreak­ing hav­oc with my moti­va­tion — not to men­tion my col­i­tis — which is why I haven’t start­ed rebuild­ing my life yet. For now, I try to do one thing every day that will make me hap­py, so I can say it was a good day. Baby steps.

But I’ve also lost all inspi­ra­tion, and I’m left won­der­ing if this is anoth­er effect of selec­tive sero­tonin reup­take inhi­bi­tion. When I walk the streets, it feels like a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent world from what I knew.

I used to pick up my gui­tar through­out the day and noo­dle. I used to car­ry my cam­era with me every­where in case some­thing caught my eye. I used to write almost every day. Creativity was a dri­ving force in my life, and a huge part of how I used to define myself. Now I nev­er feel like cre­at­ing. I used to be ter­ri­fied of going on med­ica­tion for this exact rea­son, but I’ve dis­cov­ered that the med­ica­tion makes it all okay. It’s like Cipralex is both the cause and the cure.

At least I can go out­side now. I can face the world, and start fix­ing what needs to be fixed.

the other side

Lila’s been my inspi­ra­tion late­ly. Her pho­tos are of such rou­tine sub­jects, but every frame is more than that moment. There’s some­thing about them that exudes glam­our and inti­ma­cy, as if her entire life was filled with cham­pagne and Channel.

I asked her what the­o­ry she fol­lows, what equip­ment she uses, expect­ing to learn some basic tech­nique I’ve some­how missed. Instead, she tells me she does­n’t do or use any­thing spe­cial. She does­n’t even know what she sets for expo­sure and tone, cause she always plays around and changes them for every pho­to she takes. A true Taoist when it comes to pho­tog­ra­phy, and a true pho­tog­ra­ph­er after my heart.

lila

“best birth­day ever.”, “coolest guy on the block”, “he is the one”, “London, I love you”.

One of my favourite sub­jects is her per­fect­ly-coifed, impec­ca­bly-dressed Norwegian boyfriend. Sometimes he’s just lying by the win­dow, and with his shirt off you can make out the fab­ric creas­es that have marked his back, reveal­ing that he’s recent­ly turned over on the bed. It makes you won­der what’s hap­pened, or what’s about to hap­pen. These are the details she’s cho­sen to cap­ture. These things were impor­tant enough for her to pick up her cam­era. There’s such affec­tion under it all, and per­haps that’s why it’s so fas­ci­nat­ing to see how the girl looks at the guy.

It’s the same with Aurora’s old entries:

Rolf is sit­ting a few feet away from me on a Sunday night and we’re about to play Settlers Of Catan online togeth­er. He’ll wake me with a kiss in the morn­ing and we’ll dri­ve to work togeth­er. I’m full of a tasty new sup­per that he intro­duced me to. We’ve just fucked on the floor.

Do I love him? Or do I love this? How big is the dif­fer­ence?

I’ve always won­dered what a per­son would say if she ever wrote about me the way Aurora wrote about him. To see a lover learn­ing and grow­ing, fig­ur­ing out their life and the world, and dis­cov­er­ing what part I play in all of that.

New Hampshire: Day 3

Thumbnail: Corn chips

Thumbnail: Real tacos

I’m free again after my train­ing, and Dave takes me to his favourite restau­rant in Nashua to meet up with Sid and his girl­friend. It’s a small, fam­i­ly-owned Mexican joint with bright colours and an appro­pri­ate­ly accent­ed wait­ress.

Over din­ner, we com­pare our region­al dif­fer­ences. I ask them what it means when some­one says “A quar­ter of one” (12:45), because they don’t say “a quar­ter to one”. I ask them if they take their shoes off when they get in the house (some­times, depend­ing on the host), because I noticed no one did when I was in a house1. I ask them if they have bub­ble tea (there’s one Vietnamese restau­rant that serves it), because it’s all over Canada now. I tell them New York Fries serves pou­tine (What’s New York Fries?). I pull out some Canadian bills and show them the braille (Oooooooh). At one point, Sid calls me on my “eh”, con­trast­ed from their “huh” used at the end of a sen­tence to empha­size a point.

Thumbnail: Downtown Manchester

Thumbnail: Cross button
Thumbnail: Kelly and Dave.
Thumbnail: Chelsey and Ed
Thumbnail: Greek donuts
Thumbnail: Dave's notes

Dave and I dri­ve to down­town Manchester, the biggest city in New Hampshire, to a bar/café called Republic. Every month, Dave orga­nizes the Collective, a group of cre­ative peo­ple with a cer­tain ener­gy, and a void in their lives when it comes to some­one with whom to dis­cuss their endeav­ors on a prac­ti­cal, non­threat­en­ing, phil­an­thropic lev­el.

I repeat a per­son­’s name after being intro­duced to them, a trick I learned from the client spe­cial­ist course I took in New Hampshire four years ago.

At one point, Ed asks us how we know each oth­er, and Dave explains, along with a sto­ry:

When my sis­ter and I were kids, we imag­ined what it would be like if we were more of us, so we need­ed an old­er sis­ter and a younger broth­er to round out the sib­ling expe­ri­ence. As the old­est broth­er, I need­ed to know what hav­ing an old­er sis­ter was like. And we also chose per­son­al­i­ties to go with them. I think the old­er sis­ter was a heavy­set, strong girl with a deter­mined, moth­er­ing ten­den­cy toward us. Her name was Daphne, and she was the type to play field hock­ey or lacrosse when she went to col­lege had we known what that was back when we were kids. The younger broth­er would be a slen­der, artis­tic type that was a styl­ish and care­ful dress­er; “met­ro­sex­u­al” was the term we’d have used, my sis­ter com­ment­ed recent­ly, had we known the word. His name was Leland.

And when he met me yes­ter­day, he thought, “That’s Leland!”. Now he’s won­der­ing if he’s going to run into Daphne in the future.

After two hours of bril­liant con­ver­sa­tion and exchange of ener­gy, we go our sep­a­rate ways. These are my peo­ple, and I feel the need to start some­thing sim­i­lar in Ottawa.

Thumbnail: Me and Dave

I take a pic­ture of us because I leave tomor­row, short­ly after the end of the course, and won’t have a chance to see him again. I offer my house if he ever wants to get away and change up his frame of mind, and he returns the offer.

In 24 hours, I’ll be home sweet home again, but cer­tain­ly wish­ing I had more time to talk, and relate, and feel as if there was anoth­er kin­dred soul in the world.

  1. Not even in my hotel room, which I found very strange. [↩]