I meant to start up another post just now, but something else came up and I just couldn’t resist. I was responding to those Thursday Thirteen participants who had left a comment here, when I landed of Melanie’s blog. Her theme for TT this week was 13 things from the 80’s that represented that period for her and she listed such things as; the big hair, the rubic’s cube, big plastic earrings, white Ked’s, leggings with baggy sweaters, The Facts of Life and so on. She also asked her visitors to share their recollections from the 80’s in the comments section, and that proved a little bit difficult for me. I’ve spent the better part of the 90’s and O’s trying to forget that decade ever existed, but what I remember most about that period after ’82 is how much effort I put into being a rebel and an outsider, even when I was trying to be a prep, alternating with modette or nihilistic art-school type. All I knew while I was busy searching for an identity, was that I wanted as little to do with popular culture as possible. Therefore most of the references people often name from that decade usually meant very little to me personally.
I’d love to start comparing 80’s pop culture and counter culture, but that’ll just have to go into the draft file for now. One thing I remember the most about the 80’s is the music. Once I got over the Heavy Metal phase (or Speed Metal I think it was — ya, scary, I know) it was out of the question for me to listen to Boy George or Michael Jackson, both of which I saw as sellouts catering to teenyboppers. Instead I got into a lot of 60’s and 70’s stuff, but there was also Bauhaus, Depeche Mode (I was a fan from the start), Siouxie and the Banshees, The Clash, Soft Cell, Pet Shop Boys, and many others who were actually great musical influences, even by today’s standards. One band I quite liked and haven’t heard from in ages is A Flock of Seagulls, though I did find a few treasures on YouTube. So without further ado, here is the whole reason for this post, a song I’m sure many of you will remember:
I’m going to see if I can purchase that on iTunes. In case you’re wondering “yeah, what did happen to them?” you can check it out here.
Photo: Rob Jamieson
February 29, 2008
Remember the Seagulls?
February 28, 2008
Thirteen Things I Want to Blog About [#14]
Once in a while, I may feel I have nothing to say here, but it’s a rare occurrence and tends to be based on my mood rather than what the contents of my draft file are. Usually (like today for example) my problem is that I don’t know which topic to start with because I have too many ideas. Here are 13 blog topics you can look forward to seeing on my blog... eventually:
1. On Propaganda. It’s a big topic and has had massive repercussions in recent history. While I’ve already done a bunch of research and typed out a good 1,000 words so far, it’s all a bit daunting because there are so many aspects and manifestations of propaganda a person could talk about. While I have many things to say about this subject, I haven’t found my angle yet. I might end up breaking it down and writing it in several installments.
2. Fear of Joy. I just added that to my drafts this week and it’s something I want to blog about asap, only look at that! The week’s almost over already.
3. On Self-image. Something I’ve had on my list for many months now. It’s something I feel I need to talk about and might be meaningful to others as well, but it’s touching on issues that I’m still grappling with every day. Since it’s a painful topic for me, I think I need to feel strong to wrestle with it and come out of the experience strengthened.
4. On Self-Criticism. This is a post I meant to do today but life intervened and I had other things to do. It’s coming up soon. I definitely have things to say about that topic. Straight from the trenches to you.
5. The ones the can still be saved. When I wrote about the Yangtze River Dolphins, I had originally meant to do a piece on various lesser known and rare species who are currently listed as endangered. But I’m still prone to tears whenever I think of those poor extinguished dolphins, and I have a hard time feeling enthusiastic about the odds of other endangered animals right now. But I’ll just pick myself up by the bootstraps because there are plenty of animals that we can still help, and help them we must. Blogging about them is a start.
6. Alice in Wonderland - Contemporary illustrations. Following the wonderful post I did featuring various artists who had illustrated this story that so many of us know and love, I had set out to find how it’s been interpreted in the more recent past. I look forward to getting to this one — the research alone will be fun, just have to make time for it.
7. Margaret Bourke-White. Also something I look forward to working on. I’d like to do my personal take on this great dame of photojournalism, who inspired me so much as a young girl.
8. Missed Connection of the Week. I posted this a couple of times and then was overwhelmed by how much research — and sheer dumb luck it requires. While I had very positive feedback on this feature, looking at hundreds and thousand of 'missed connections' postings to find one that was worthy of sharing with just the right amount of humour/intelligence/sentimentality/romantic appeal proved to be rather depressing since most of what I found was boring/pathetic/totally uninspired. Ideally, other people would contribute by sending me their finds. I’ve decided I’ll just post something if and when I find a gem.
9. When bad things happen to good people. I had a specific incident I wanted to write about, but I’m not sure if I want to share it after all. In any case, it’s an interesting topic that I think all of us could relate to and I’m sure I’ll find some kind of angle for it.
10. “Think about your sandwich”. A post I had taken down to prevent potential trouble in my ‘real’ life. I’ve been meaning to rewrite it as a piece of fiction. Now that the jealous ex isn’t checking up on me anymore (or not that I know of), maybe I’ll be able to get around to it.
11. March 19 Iraq Blogswarm. Lee has vowed to blog about the Blogswarm every day up until March 19th to encourage others to participate. I’m not quite as ambitious about it as she is, but I’ll probably post my own announcement here too (I think I just did actually!)
12. A short fiction piece. It’s been quite a while and surely I could cook something up if I set my mind to it.
13. Some photos I took today. That one is pretty self-explanatory and I’ll start working on that post as soon as I’m done with this one!
To view previous Thursday Thirteens, click here.
Pic by Whiskeygonebad, Flickr
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February 27, 2008
A Health Scare for Fritz
Well, I had managed to keep it under wraps thus far, but after the events of this morning, I need to lift the veil of shame and reach out to friends and strangers alike: Fritz has a drinking problem. And today it went from being an annoying fixation to a life-threatening obsession.
It all started when Fritz was a wee little kitten. At first, I didn’t notice anything was off. And then... every time I helped myself to a glass of water and left the room for a couple of minutes, I’d come back to find the glass toppled over, water dripping everywhere. I quickly figured out that Fritz was behind that bit of mischief. Up until then I had a habit of leaving water glasses everywhere, but I became vigilant and tried never to leave water unattended. It was harder to monitor at night. I had to keep a glass by the bed so instead of leaving it on the nightstand, I’d put it on the floor where it was less likely to cause damage, should Fritz decide to spill it, which he inevitably did. Then he discovered the tub. I’d find him in there every day, usually after my shower, lapping up the occasional drop from the faucet. This still aggravates me, since he always leaves a trail of little paw prints when he gets out.
One day I had gotten myself a gorgeous bouquet of flowers and put them in an equally gorgeous vase on the dining room table. When I came back from work, I found the flowers all over the floor along with the vase, smashed to pieces, and water everywhere. That’s when I knew something had to be done. So I went out and bought him a water dish equipped with a water fountain, filter and cooler. He liked that a lot — for about a month — then he started up with his antics again.
What I haven’t mentioned so far is how upset all this made me. Like a true co-dependent, I went from enabling him and his habit to getting angry and imposing strict new rules. He was no longer allowed in the tub. If he so much as approached a glass, I sprayed him with a water bottle. I reverted to a regular water-dish which I took to changing several times a day. Still, he preferred lapping up the pool of water at the bottom of the tub. At least I was able to bring flowers home again, which he seemed to have grown out of, and he usually left the glasses of water alone too. Instead he graduated to the kitchen sink. Whenever I had my back turned he’d be at it again, licking the faucet. That made me go ballistic. Eventually I think he got bored with hearing me shouting, and I figured out that he needs to see me change his water to register that it’s really is fresh. I’ve never seen an animal get so excited about a change of water, ever.
Well today, we had a crisis situation on our hands. Fritz came to wake me earlier than usual, and when I picked him up for our morning cuddles, I thought I detected the smell of bleach on him. Bleach? I wasn’t quite awake yet so that made no sense. And then it hit me. Shit! The bucket in the bath tub! I had left something to soak there for a couple of days and completely forgotten about it! I inspected Fritz again and sure enough, the smell was concentrated on his paws and around his mouth. I called the vet, who suggested I come in as quickly as possible. I got all my layers on to brave another cold day, called a taxi, then noticed Fritz eating his kibbles contentedly, as if he hadn’t just poisoned himself at all. Still, I got Fritz into his pet carrier bag, and once we arrived at the vet’s, sat in the waiting room for what seemed like forever only to discover I have some kind of newly acquired pet allergies; eyes and nose itchy and running, even my lips felt funny. The vet looked Fritz over and didn’t seem alarmed “I’ll send you a technician who’ll show you how to administer the medicine he should take as a precaution”. I thought cats stay away from poisonous substances? I asked him “Usually they do”. Except for my cat. Figures my cat’s a freak. Fritz was seriously pissed off when the tech showed me how to squirt the medication into his mouth and I was worried he’d gouge her eyes out in the process, even though we were both holding him down. I’m supposed to give him those meds three times a day for a week. That’ll be a whole lot of fun and games, I’m sure.
Sitting in the cab on the way back home, I realized that with all the excitemenent, I forgot to ask the vet about the small lump Fritz has in his neck. But at leas at his shots are up to date. Note to self: Do NOT leave bleach or any poisonous substances unattended. (Duh)
Pic by Smiler
Stating the Obvious
Well, I tried. And then I tried again. And again. And one more time just in case. The results are too horrible to post. But I will, just so you know what the hell I’m talking about and so you can make fun of my inexistent drawing skills. When I think the first sketch was the best of the lot, after all this. It’s all fine to start all over again and have a beginner’s mind? But then, once we’ve gotten going, can we see some results please? Apparently I’m not quite ready yet. This whole drawing thing would be much easier if I could just keep pressing “undo” and start over when I do a goof. I forgot that wasn’t an option in the manual version.
Lotus sketch #3a
Lotus sketch #3b
Lotus sketch #4
What you’re looking at are two sketches. On the first one, I used my aquarelle pencils and had the good sense to scan it before I started overworking and ultimately destroying it (and that would be lotus sketch #3b). In my defense, I had forgotten how tricky watercolors could be to work with. The last one is... I’m not sure what it is. I ruined the flower by making it much too dark and the drawing was too stiff to begin with. I hated it so much, the only way I could convince myself not to tear up the page was to amuse myself by creating the most horrible composition I could come up with. Then I thought a bit of graffiti would state what really doesn’t actually need to be said. Ugh. I think we’ll drop the lotus flowers for now.
February 26, 2008
A DYI Chet Baker Experience
While listening to some music as I was playing around with my new watercolor set today, along came Chet Baker on my randomizer. He always gets me in a kind of funny mood — I love his music though it inevitably make me feel blue too. But instead of letting the blues get the better of me this time, I got the idea to do a Chet Baker post along with the ubiquitous YouTube video. But then of course I’d forgotten: the Chet Baker Foundation has had all said videos removed, which really sucks. Oh well. I was able to find an audio version of “As Time Goes By” along with some photos of him, not to mention a music sheet for “Happy Little Sunbeam”. It’s a DYI Chet Baker experience. You can just press play and scroll up and down to look at the pictures on a loop, and depending on whether you own a musical instrument and how motivated you are, you can even play your own Chet Baker song!
powered by ODEO
(Click to enlarge)
It Comes and Goes
Have I ever mentioned how moody I am? Yes. Moody. It’s hard to tell what’s what sometimes. What I mean by that is I hardly know what mood I’m in at any given time since it fluctuates so much. And just to keep things interesting, that gets expressed in different ways. Take blogging for example. There are days when I have so many ideas for posts that I simply don’t have enough hours in a day to work on them all. And it’s more than just a vague desire to post. It’s more like a passionate drive — it feels like there’s a powerful alignment of the planets, and I have to post about ABC as though my life depended on it, as if that next post is the one that’s going to make all the difference. What difference? I don’t know, doesn’t matter. All that matters in those moments is to ride that wave because then I feel like I’m being at my most creative.
Then there are days like today. Days where I feel like everything I do is so trite and so pointless. And even though I have a dozen topics in my drafts, all of which I’ve felt passionately that I needed to blog about eventually, my damn mood makes it all so drab, that it steals away all that zing that makes me want to run with it. Sometimes I know to recognize it for what it is and just step back a little. I don’t let myself make any decision and I certainly don’t let myself read or ‘organize’ my drafts, because that would just spell disaster. The same way looking at my sketchbook would spell disaster if I allowed myself to tear out everything I find isn’t up to par. There’d be nothing left. Nothing left.
Thank goodness there’s that thing about tomorrow being another day. Another day when what though? When I’ll write a brilliant post? When I’ll nail my drawing style? Shoot a picture that a magazine will want to publish? And then what? Then nothing. I’m trying to work on my enthusiasm and motivation, all those good things — I don’t want to bore everyone with my negativity... I have enough of boring myself with it.
But where do you go once you’ve lost all your illusions and you’ve become afraid to dream? Well, I can say it’s on days like today that I feel grateful for a letter from a reader that says “I enjoy your blog every day”. Every day, really? Through the ups and downs and the in-betweens? And look at this post, I just wanted to write a few lines. You know, I can’t even imagine what living life on an even keel would be like. This is the hand I’ve been dealt. Above all, it’s days like today that it sure is a consolation to know that everything just comes and goes.
Something tells me Emily Haines knows all about that. I’ve been listening to her tonight while trying to convince myself to work on my drawings. When I hear her songs, I know I’m definitely not the only moody gal around, and it makes it all a little better.
February 25, 2008
Captured Along the Way
Just a few snapshots I took while out running errands on Saturday. This post serves as a complement to A Trip to the Art Store.
The factory-sized chimney belongs to the Montreal Children’s hospital. 
This is a very popular soup & noodle place and always full. It’s not authentic enough to my liking but I’d been wanting to shoot it for a while. Gotta love that red.
Part of the loot.
All pics by Smiler
Some music perhaps?
One of the bands I listen to a lot is Zero 7. This musical duo features vocals by different artists on their songs. I’ve been digging around a little bit on YouTube to discover what these artists have been up to on their own. Looks promising... Hope you enjoy as well!
You can find more videos on YouTube and more of their songs here: www.zero7.co.uk
February 24, 2008
On Drawing (2)
Drawing is still basically the same as it has been since prehistoric times. It brings together man and the world. It lives through magic. ~ Keith Haring
February 23, 2008
A Trip to the Art Store
Here’s something to be proud of: I went outside for the simple pleasure of it yesterday. That’s probably not such big news for many of you, but my regular readers know that to me any outing is was an eventful outing. Originally, I wanted to go outside to make my parents happy. They both made not so veiled suggestion in my comment box this week, and I knew they had a point. On that day it was -16ºC (3.2ºF), so I decided to wait for more clement weather. The forecasting for this weekend was promising: sunny with temperatures around -5ºC (25ºF) that was my window of opportunity to get some fresh air right there.
The day went by very quickly yesterday and before I knew it, it was already well past three, and I’d still not gotten out. I needed to make some sort of plan and get out there ASAP. Typically for me, I was having trouble deciding what I wanted to do. I had in mind walking over to a lovely little park nearby. It has a massive water-fountain and I’d been wanting to photograph it for some time, and thought it would be interesting to capture it during different seasons. But then I also wanted to pick up some watercolours at the art store. I had to choose since the park and the shopping were in opposite directions and there wasn’t enough time to do both. Simple decisions like that can be agonizing to make for me. I’ve opted to stay at home over much less than that.
At that moment, I remembered my dream about Butterfly Boy and the 7 Year-Old Teenager which was clearly a reminder that I need to pay more attention to my inner child. So I thought I’d try something new and ask her what she wanted to do. “Both.” she said without hesitation “I want to go to the park AND the art store”. “But we can’t do both” I answered “they’re in opposite directions”. She started sulking immediately.
I thought: if I was a parent — a fun and loving parent — how would I deal with this difficult child? As it was, I was ambivalent about going to the art store. Normally I love going to art stores, but the only store in my vicinity is located inside a mall in the busiest part of the city. They were sure to carry everything we needed and then some, but I didn’t have the courage to face the crowds and the lighting and the music and the bad service not to mention infinite possibilities for spending too much money. And then I remembered a small mom and pop shop which is only 20 minutes from here on foot. If I took the camera with me, I would also have plenty of time to take some photos of one of my favorite streets along the way.
La rue Souvenir (Remembrance Street) is one of those little harbors of peace, a dead-end tucked away between a highway, two major arteries and church grounds. It’s mostly walk-up grey-stones of the sort you find all over this city. But there are also majestic trees and that certain je ne sais quoi... and for some reason I always feel like I’m a visitor in my own city when I take a stroll there. I checked with the kid and she was into that plan too. I put on one of my new pairs of “fat” jeans which actually have a cool design, and I decided that for now, I carry the weight nicely. A spritz of my favorite scent, Eau des Merveilles by Hermes and we were off, the kid and I.
There was nary a cloud in the sky, which was a marvelously saturated blue. It was still cold, but the sun warmed my back as I snapped away to my heart’s content on rue Souvenir. I recalled the children’s hospital just one street up. I’d been wanting to photograph those buildings, but mostly the chimney, which is enormous and on a clear day sends billowing white smoke. I finally got to snap quite a few shots there. When I got to St-Catherine street, our main commercial artery, I felt inspired to take my camera out again to snap something of interest. I normally hesitate to pull out my camera on busy streets and St-Catherine isn’t what you’d call photogenic, but I went for it anyway. What struck me was that people seem to go out of their way to avoid looking at each other in this city, but as soon as I had my camera out, I noticed that a few people smiled shyly at me, which was a nice change.
By the time I arrived at British Blue Print Art Supplies, I was in quite a good mood. How to describe that store? For starters, it hadn’t changed at all since last I’d been there, which was about 15 years ago. The first impression upon entering the store is that it’s so cramped with piles upon piles of things balancing precariously all over the place, that it seems unlikely that one would find anything at all, were one to have to funny notion of walking in with a specific idea of what one wanted to purchase. But the employee who greeted me seemed kind and understanding, and when I told him what I was looking for, instead of waving me in a general direction, he took his time to show me the variety or watercolors and patiently unwrapped packages at my request so I could see the colours. You would have thought I was buying a car with all the questions I was asking, but none of that seemed to phase him in the least. I doubt I would have gotten this kind of service at the megastore.
Of course I couldn’t limit myself to just the watercolors, which are good quality professional grade. I got watercolor pencils too and picked up a few good quality brushes, and a watercolor paper pad. Luckily for me, British Blue Print closes early, which helped contain my little shopping frenzy, otherwise I simply would not have stopped and very likely would have ended up outfitting myself in oil paints as well.
Pic by Smiler
On Drawing
“Drawing is the art of being able to leave an accurate record
of the experience of what one isn’t, of what one doesn’t know.
A great drawer is either confirming beautifully what is
commonplace or probing authoritatively the unknown.”
~ Brett Whiteley
From Top:
Shao
Brett Whiteley
Mixed Media
The 15 Great Dog Pisses of Paris
Brett Whiteley
1989
Oil, charcoal, plaster, collage, and resin on canvas
Alchemy (detail)
Brett Whiteley
1972-73
Oil, gold leaf, collage, rock, perpex, electricity, pencil, PVA, varnish, brain, earth, twig, taxidermied bird, nest, egg, feathers, cicada, bone, dentures, rubber and metal sink plug, pins, shell and glass eye on eighteen wood panels
What Drug Is Your Personality Like?
Why am I not surprised with the result?
Your Personality Is Like Acid |
 A bit wacky, you're very difficult to predict. One moment you're in your own little happy universe... And the next, you're on a bad trip to your own personal hell! At your best: You understand the world completely, and every ordinary experience is sublime. What people like about being around you: You say and do the craziest things. You're very entertaining. What people dislike about being around you: You're unpredictable. Your mood swings are quite intense. How addicted people get to you: They pretty much don't get addicted to you. |
February 22, 2008
Butterfly Boy and the 7 Year Old Teen
I just remembered this very strange dream I had last night about a different kind of shopping experience, and though “I should share this with the entire world!” because of course that’s my first reflex these days, good little blogger that I am. Here it is without further ado:
While I’m out and about running errands, on a whim, I decide to go into a store which sells small children. In the dream, which is taking place a few years from now, this is an acceptable thing to do, since they sell children — orphaned or not— the same way they sell small animals at the pet store. But I see that this shop is reputable since there are several proofs of endorsement by Unicef. The children are very tiny, like dolls really. Kind of elongated and very narrow dolls. There’s an older girl who is maybe seven years old and a little boy who is just a toddler that catch my eye because they’re so very nice to look at. I feel the same excitement and joy I had when I got Fritz as a kitten, and I’m thinking “isn’t it fun, now I’ll have new little companions I can actually talk with”.
I bring them home along with the rest of my shopping bags, thinking how strange it is that I had this impulse to buy a couple of children like that, especially considering I’ve never wanted any before*. But then I remind myself that it’s quite normal for a woman over forty to have children on her own nowadays. We take a taxi and the children are being good little products and staying quiet and nicely packaged in their wrappers while we make our way home.
That first night I don’t have a room or beds for them, since the whole thing’s been so spur of the moment, but that hardly matters since we cut right to the next scene where I wake up the next morning and the children are exploring the apartment and sniffing about cautiously, like kittens, and when they see me emerge from my room they let me know how happy and excited they are to spend some time with their new mom, i.e. me. But as it turns out I have a meeting to go to at work, so I tell them we’ll have to put off the fun and games 'till later. I ask the children to be good and tell them I’ll be back in just a few hours and then my taxi comes to pick me up.
Once I get to work, I see things are definitely not running as usual. The big boss is at the door greeting employees and informing them the meeting has been canceled and to go ahead and enjoy themselves. The whole office building has been turned into some sort of department store, and we’re told everything is sold at a steep discount and encouraged to go ahead and shop. I load up on beauty products, telling myself that now that I have two children I won’t have much time or money to buy that sort of thing anymore. Every time I run into someone I know and have a short conversation, like with co-workers and bosses or people from other departments, I see it as an opportunity to talk about my new children and I make sure to end each and every chat with “well, I’d better hurry up, my two children are waiting for me at home”. I say this with great pride and joy (the same way a “normal” parent would, I suppose) and even create opportunities to talk to people so I can end on that note. When people ask me when I had my children I tell them: “Oh, I got them yesterday” and leave it at that. At that point I’m trying to hurry because time is flying by and I’m worried about the kids all on their own, but I can’t pass up a good sale like this either. I load up on a few supplies I think might be useful for the children, like swimsuits and some sort of gadget required to play a kind of video game (something my new little girl has asked me to get for her). I see a whole big bunch of inexpensive colorful things which look like long plastic sticks — I haven’t the faintest notion what they can be used for, but I tell myself that the children will like them “because they’re colorful” and get a great big bundle of them.
When I go to the cash to pay, I realize I’ve left the children alone for more than eight hours by then and have a vision of them starving to death or wilting, and I tell the cashier we need to hurry because “my children have been alone all day and they need me”. As I say that I tell myself that unlike pets, kids actually need looking after and I won’t be able to do this sort of thing again. I lug all my useless junk back home on foot this time because I want to save on the taxi, and by the time I get home I find the children are quite sullen and being cranky and difficult. I’m already starting to regret my decision to buy them since I know that once the initial joy of getting brand new children has worn off, it will only require more and more work to take care of them. I want them to try on their new swimsuits so they can go try out the neighbour’s swimming pool (a rare thing to find in the city, I tell them) but they aren’t up to it. At that moment the boy becomes a butterfly and flits about everywhere, and I look for him worried that I won’t be able to find him again, while the girl is giving me a hard time and saying I should just let him do whatever he wants, and the more she talks the more I realize that along with butterfly boy, I also have a seven year-old teenager on my hands.
For those who don’t know me very well, this dream is especially strange since I don’t want children* to begin with and have never seen them in my dreams. Of course I do realize that the children are most probably symbols for other things. While I’m grateful for a dream that’s not traumatizing, this one’s quite a trip and certainly leaves me rather perplexed.
Illustrations by Cristian Turdera
*Something I’ll blog about in future.
Lotus Flower - Sketch #1
All right, I’m only posting this to be a good sport, because Lee went and implied (but did not actually say, no, no, no!) that I’m not playing fair by not showing my first horrendous attempts at drawing, since she went and kindly showed me her first effort at collaging. Fine. This is a lotus flower which is apparently made out of concrete. It also forgot that it’s supposed to be lyrical and somewhat symmetrical, poor thing. In my defense, first try, no pencil draft. Normally I would use this to line the trash can with before showing it to anyone, but of course I’m not going to start tearing into my Moleskine, so there you go. I’m off to get some rest now. I’m traumatized*.
*No not really, I’m just being a drama queen.
February 21, 2008
The Lives of Others
I’m all verklempt* right now. Just finished watching The Lives of Others, a German movie which won a bevy of awards, including an Oscar for best foreign language movie in 2007. I hereby confirm that this movie deserved every single one of those awards. I also remember my mother enthusiastically describing it to me months ago; East Germany during the socialist regime, a story about the Stasi (secret police) singling out individuals and performing intensive surveillance. Great acting. At that point I was imagining grey, beige and brown scenes, lots of angst, and lots of sub-titles, with great acting.
While I was right about the general color palette and the angst and the subtitles too, there is so, so much more to this film than what meets the eye. The acting truly is superb. It’s set in 1984 East Germany, when the state prided itself on “knowing everything about everybody”. No criticism or joke about the regime is tolerated. Stasi high officials have decided to put a prominent author/playwright and his famous actress girlfriend under surveillance, presumably in an effort to continue purging the art world of dissidents. In no time flat, the apartment of Georg Dreyman (the author, played by Sebastian Koch) and Christa-Maria Sieland (the actress, played by Martina Gedeck) is secretly and thoroughly wired. An expert interrogator from the Stasi, Gerd Wiesler (brilliantly played by Ulrich Mühe in his last role) — who is also an eager supporter of the regime — sits in the attic to listen in on the couple, with specific instructions that he must find dirt on Dreyman... There is so much more to tell, but to do so would spoil the movie.
It’s a beautifully acted drama about a world where suspicions abound and nothing is certain, not even who is the villain and who the hero. I would never have though I’d enjoy a movie about dreary proletarians and grey bureaucrats quite so thoroughly, though of course there is a whole lot more to it than that. You’ll just have to see it for yourself.
Oh and mum: I get it now.
* Yiddish for “overcome with emotion”
Thirteen Things on My Desk [#13]
My desk is a little bit like a shoreline. Depending on what the waves bring in, sometimes it’s neat and almost uncluttered, sometimes it’s filled with piles of stuff, and sometimes it’s just generally messy, as it is today. Of course there are many more than 13 things on this desk, but here is a selection:
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Pic by Smiler
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Someday I Will Draw Again
There was a time when I could draw with ease and the feeling of pen or pencil on a blank sheet felt empowering, filled with possibilities, or so I like to tell myself, but it’s not actually true. The honeymoon didn’t last. It’s true that there was a time of exploration in my teens when I discovered a natural aptitude and spent a lot of time drawing nudes from Photo Magazine. We had a stack of them, all editions from the 70’s and early 80’s — which I still have. I would pick just about any image and do a pretty good drawing of it. It was an exciting time, a sort of grace period before the inner critic came crashing in uninvited. Since he showed up, nothing has ever been the same. That first flush of excitement when picking up the pencil, enjoying the simplest thing, like how it felt physically to draw and move my hand across the page, lingering as I drew long lines which curved and swelled and then shorter strokes, drawn quicker with more assurance — like writing music — that’s what it felt like. But instead of music, when I looked at my finished piece there was an image that I had somehow brought to life. It truly felt like the whole process was magical. I would lose the notion of time and of self even, becoming just an instrument, only to come back from a kind of trance, almost surprised to see what I had produced.
But things quickly changed under the inner critic’s regime. He became more and more demanding, relentless too, and very adept at finding all my soft spots so that it could hit me where it really hurt. “How can you take pride in these drawings that are no more than copies? You’re no better than a street artist but you’ve got even less imagination. You’ll never amount to anything” “You’re going to have to learn to draw other things than naked ladies, the world is filled with interesting things. What’s the use of having a talent if you don’t exploit it properly?” not to mention the play-by-play I would get of how bad I was at everything, as I was trying to finish up a drawing. Well, I don’t know if that’s what the inner critic was after, but pretty soon I became scared of drawing. All the cruel criticizm was too painful to deal with, and I chose to throw the baby out with the bath water. I had enough problems to deal with. I didn’t need to get so much grief for trying to do something which should have given me pleasure and a sense of freedom.
I did pick it up again here and there. While I was putting together a portfolio to get into design school, I took Drawing From Life and painting classes. My teachers were very encouraging and more than once suggested I continue on to a Fine Arts program. But I had made my choice. I wanted to study and work in commercial arts and make a proper living. I found nothing romantic or appealing about that whole “starving artist” thing. I spent years without doing any kind of personal art project and then suddenly I’d get a little burst of creative energy and do a few drawings or paintings here and there.
Whether or not it’s a coincidence, I don’t know, but those times that I’ve felt strongest that I needed to draw again came when I was in a depression. This time around... I’ve been wanting to get drawing for many months and so far have dared pick up my pen only twice. Mostly I’ve been terrified. I’ve gotten past the fear in the past by doing deliberate “bad drawings” or frantic scribbles with colored crayons, that sort of thing. Last night, I finally picked up my brand new Moleskine sketchbook, determined to take a stab at drawing again. I couldn’t decide what to draw, so I took Fritz as a model. Only I should have known better, because Fritz, feeling observed and hearing the pen scratching the paper, grew restless and took to changing positions every 2-3 seconds. It was maddening. I’d barely get a chance to draw an ear of an eye and oops! he’d moved again. I told him I was officially firing him as a model when I saw all I had managed was a dozen or so single ears, one paw and a couple of eyes — not even a pair at that. He doesn’t give a rat’s ass is what I think he answered me.
So today I told myself I’d try something very simple, like geometric shapes or squiggles. One thing I found out yesterday is that I have no hand-eye coordination left anymore. That was really shocking. It had never occurred to me that you can lose that, figuring it was an aptitude like any other and once you had it you just kept it, like the ability to ride a bicycle. Not so. All right, so we can start with the basics, only... I always want to be skipping ahead to the more advanced exercises, figuring I “should” be able to since I’m supposed to be talented, right? Well now I’m learning that all along, it’s been this thinking that I’m talented that’s been the real problem. I never could give myself a proper break here and there because I was supposed to do brilliant drawings every time. Fine, so I’ll go about it as though I’d never drawn in my life before. It’s awfully humbling, but if it helps me draw...
My inner critic is already having a field day with this. Hysterical laughter and then pfoaaa! Look at what our little Leonardo is drawing now! Squares and circles, how cute! (more evil laughter). Whatever. Fuck off. Show me YOUR drawings why don’t you, smart ass. Say what? You don’t have any? Because you don’t have a body or hands to draw with? Aw that’s just terribly sad but if you’ve never even tried it, why don’t you just shut the fuck up and leave me alone then?! And of course I don’t mean you, dear reader. I’m going to go and make some kind of markings on my Moleskine sketchbook. When I start getting my confidence back, I may show you what I’m up to.
February 20, 2008
At least he keeps his pants on...
Lee, introduced me to Davey Dance Blog today, a video blog found on Vimeo. Davey started the Blog while he was in Europe and is still going strong in the U.S. He picks a location and a pop song, and with his iPod and Canon PowerShot, records himself dancing and trippin’ to the beats. He’s no Baryshnikov to be sure but it’s goofy and kinda cool at the same time.
Davey Dance Blog -42- STRASBOURG - The Rakes "Strasbourg" from Pheasant Plucker on Vimeo.
Here’s another goofy clip called “No Pant” which is featured on Vimeo:
No Pants 2k8 from ImprovEverywhere on Vimeo.
February 19, 2008
I’m in Therapy. Aren’t You?
My therapist had offered the possibility of doing phone sessions once in a while, which worked out very well today because I probably would have found a way to wriggle out of this one. There was a specific issue I needed to talk to her about, but the topic of my adolescent traumas had not become any easier to deal with over time and I had spent the better part of 25 years mostly avoiding talking about all that. But when we opened that can of worms last week with some postings about bullying, I found my own reaction quite extreme what with continuous tears for a few days, which is when I knew it was time to face my demons. But I was nervous about it all week. My reaction to stress in cases like that is that I get very sleepy, which is what happened around 1:30 p.m. today. With my session scheduled at 4 p.m. I figured I had plenty of time for a long nap and lied down on the couch, only to be awoken by the phone at 4:01 p.m.
I don’t know how other people do it, but when I have something big to talk about in therapy I tend to go with one of two approaches. Sometimes I start off with a bang by making a declaration about what’s going on, which tends to happen when I have positive news to share, like: “I’m going on a trip!” or “I got a promotion!”. But today I had to get warmed up before I could get to the point. I spent the first forty minutes putting all the elements of the story in place, and then when I saw we were into the last ten minutes of our time, I finally convinced myself to just bring out my big scary monsters. It would have been intolerable to drag it out until the next session. The fact that I was talking to her on the phone instead of facing her made it easier to talk about such emotionally charged material. Ten minutes can be an awful long time though. I realized this when I was done coming out with my terrible secrets, and saw that there was a whole 7 mins left. But my therapist came through for me then. “Congratulations!” she said in an upbeat, cheerful tone. That confused me a little. I was half expecting some kind of reprimand, although that would have been unlike her and completely unprofessional besides. Which goes to show just how “unacceptable” I though my confessions were. And then in my confusion I also thought maybe she was congratulating me for all the nonsense I was involved in all those years ago because maybe she thought it had led to growth in some ways. So I asked her, “How do you mean?”. “Well,” she said, “I think you’re very brave to tell your story, which is understandably very difficult for you to deal with. I know you’ve been wanting to bring it up for a long time, so bravo! You finally got it out there in the open. You did some great work today”.
So yay to me. That’s one step in the right direction. I think I’ll be holding on to that therapist for a while longer. And nope, I’m still not going to say what the specifics of that story are. Not here anyway. It just wouldn’t be appropriate. Feel free to use your imagination. Try writing down the worst kind of scenario, and then make the situation even more awful. That should give you a nice little piece of fiction to post on your blog. :-)
Quote of the Day
“To love is to suffer. To avoid suffering, one must not love. But, then one suffers from not loving. Therefore, to love is to suffer, not to love is to suffer, to suffer is to suffer. To be happy is to love, to be happy, then, is to suffer, but suffering makes one unhappy, therefore, to be unhappy one must love, or love to suffer, or suffer from too much happiness — I hope you're getting this down.” ~ Woody Allen
Pic by tamilian, Flickr
February 18, 2008
Getting to Istanbul
For a good while now, I’ve been visited by a kind of recurring dream. It’s always shifting, but retains some key elements from one time to the next. I haven’t been able to recall dreams very well lately, probably because of one of the medications I’ve been prescribed. But for the past week I’ve been back to sleeping a lot and I was finally able to remember details from my dreams from last night. Probably because I awoke several times in the course of my sleep cycle without getting up, which allowed me to remember bits and pieces. I didn’t want to get up because I felt exhausted, but I also wanted to give myself a chance to have a pleasant dream for once, instead of my usual fare of stress and confusion. I don’t know why I bother because I can only remember having one pleasant dream in all my adult years. I wonder what it’s like having pleasant dreams on a regular basis? I won’t go into all the minute details of my dreams here. I’ll just describe those elements that keep coming back almost every night because I figure if the dream keeps repeating itself, it must be because there’s a message I’m not getting. I’ve often found that the insights some of my readers share with me sometimes help me see more clearly, and perhaps with a little luck, this will be the case here.
Anxiety. The first element that is always present is a state of high anxiety. I know I’m supposed to be somewhere and I’m constantly running around, even when I’m meant to be resting in the dream. This is true of all my dreams.
Work. There is almost always a work situation where I return to work after my prolonged absence, and find the corporation has undergone extensive growth and has been completely restructured; they’re usually in a new building and/or in a different city and there have been so many hires that I hardly recognize anyone. Sometimes I’m left by myself in my new office as though I was expected to know what to do and who to pass on my instructions to, but usually I’m mostly wandering around the building trying to find something. As I’m wandering, I inevitable pass by one, or several boardrooms which have glass partitions so that I can see in and vice-versa. Last night as a change, I was actually sitting at the boardroom and was expected to make smart pronouncements but instead whenever I opened my mouth, a long stream of gibberish would come out, which another of the attendants would eventually cut off with his/her own remarks. My boss is always in one of those boardrooms, or on her way in or out of one. Sometimes we exchange a few words, sometimes not.
The work situation is always especially stressful since, in addition to the understandable stress caused by the prospect of going back to work after many months of leave and the usual stress that comes with my job, there is almost always a major problem with my wardrobe. Once I was wearing a micro mini dress which would lift with every passing breeze... while wearing no panties. Which is a variation on the “showing up naked” dream which apparently is quite common. I don’t remember the specifics of other dreams, though I do know that in almost every instance, the clothes do not do an adequate job of covering my nakedness and/or are highly inappropriate for work (for example, a party dress I’ve worn the night before which has gotten drenched in the rain and is still soaking wet) .
Vacation. There is often a situation where I am on vacation somewhere, or on my way there, or am in a location both for work and play. The “vacation” part of the dream is not fun or relaxing at all, since there is always a strong sensation that I’m supposed to be somewhere else, though I don’t know where that is.
Istanbul. This is usually the time around which I figure out that I had booked a trip to Istanbul and that:
a) I’ve already missed the flight by hours or days, up to a week, or
b) the flight is only a couple of hours from now, which doesn’t leave me enough time to get to the airport, let alone pack my suitcase, or
c) I decide to drop everything and fly to Istanbul, even though I don’t have clothes or passport or money to take with me, or
d) I decide I don’t want to go to Istanbul, even though I’ll have wasted a very expensive ticket.
In many cases, as happens in dreams, I don’t actually take a flight but just spontaneously end up all by myself in a small residential area of what at that point I can only assume is Istanbul. I’m hungry and tired and the street I’m on has shops and cafés and a homemade ice cream stand/juice bar, and even a youth hostel or bed & breakfast-type place, though no one speaks English or French and I can’t make myself understood when I ask for anything. I point a lot, but I can’t get directions on how to get to whatever it is I’m trying to find. Furthermore, in this scenario, I don’t have money or a plane ticket to fly back “home”. I don’t have a suitcase or change of clothes either since as you can see from the options above, I didn’t have a chance to bring any of that.
Why Istanbul? I’m not sure exactly why it is that the destination is always Istanbul. The only connection I have to Istanbul is that I was meant to go there about ten years ago when I went to visit the Greek Islands, but I ended up living in Crete for five months instead. The way I had originally planned the trip had me doing some island hopping in Greece for two weeks, and then finishing off my trip with one week in Istanbul. Initially, I kept calling the airline and changing my flights so I could stay in Crete longer until eventually I decided I didn’t want to leave Greece and would visit Istanbul some other time.
This dream has been baffling me for a while now, but today I literally haven’t been able to shake it. And I keep wondering if I haven’t forgotten about an arrangement I’ve made, and hoping that’s not the case because I just couldn’t handle having to pack my suitcase on the fly right now.
Pic: oberazzi (Tim O'Brien), Flickr
Soundtrack to...
...my dreams maybe? In any case, hadn’t heard Suzanne Vega in a long time and this particular remix in quite a while. It’s bound to bring back memories.
February 17, 2008
A Walk in the Rain.
If you were to ask me today what it is I miss more than anything, I’d say it would have to be taking a walk in nature, preferably in the woods somewhere, not too long after a light downpour so all the smells and colors are fresh and alive. As I was looking through these photos, I was shocked to realize that the last nature walk I enjoyed was in Australia, at Monga National Park, which is far too long ago now. We had a light rain that day. The pleasant kind, the kind that refreshes and stops before anyone gets too soaked.
Pics by Smiler
February 16, 2008
Gone but not forgotten.
I’ve been sorting all my photographs for two days in a row now. My collection was in a horrible mess and I’d been wanting to organize it a little for a number of years now, but kept putting it off. Because I’m a procrastinator and because it always seemed like there was something better to do and most of all, I was worried about catching the blues, as I’m bound to do when I spend a prolonged amount of time sifting through old memories. I just hit that wall over an hour ago. But there are three or four dozen little piles of photographs on the coffee table still waiting to get assigned to their respective envelopes, so I thought breaking all that up with a post should be helpful.
I’ve been wondering what people do with their prints nowadays. Put them in albums? Scan them all and throw away the originals? Well I have no intention of throwing away originals, though I’ve finally purged all the photos I didn’t think were worth keeping, and couldn’t help but feel guilty with every photo I put in the wastepaper basket. I’ll be scanning quite a few of the pics from the early 70’s in case the originals deteriorate, and many of them already have. As for the next step required in this endeavour, I’d have to take several days or weeks to collect myself and then I do have three or four empty photo albums that could be of use, only I don’t find they’re suitable. If I’m going to go through all that trouble of making photo albums, then they should all be identical with a spine I could write on which would make them easier to store and identify. And then I want to do it the old fashioned way, with little stick-on corners, which requires quite a bit more work I know. There are many many projects like that which take me years to accomplish (if ever) because I always figure, “if I’m going to go through all that bother, then may as well make that extra effort and do it right”. I do realize how absurd it all gets sometimes, the lengths I go to so that things will meet my requirements, but I was like that as a four year old, and I doubt I’ll be changing now that I’m thirty eight.
It’s just so weird seeing your entire life reduced to these 4x6" or 5x7" prints. Each of those images carries so much more than the moment that is captured. And if you’re the photographer, then there are all these added layers of how you felt at the time and what was going though you head and where you’d been shortly before and so on. I can hardly look at a single photo I’ve taken without being transported back to that moment when I rested my brow on the camera and looked through that viewfinder. All those layers of feeling and information come surging in. It’s a bit overwhelming sometimes, to be honest.
So tonight, out of all the possibilities of photographs from Prague and Paris and Strasbourg and Crete and Israel and me as an adorable baby, I picked that photo of an old crumbling building that doesn’t mean anything to me to accompany this post. I think it’s an odd choice, but there you go. It was a building here in Montreal which had been abandoned for many years. I don’t remember what used to be in there. It was by the side of a very busy road and every time I drove past it, I was reminded that I wanted to photograph it, but of course never had my camera with me. Then one day as I drove by it, I had this strong impulse to turn back and go pick up my camera at home so that I could finally grab a couple of quick snaps. I was pressed for time so once I got what I needed, I told myself I’d go back again to get some detail shots some other time. The very next day when I drove by, there was no building standing there anymore. It had been reduced to nothing more than a huge heap of steel and concrete. Seems the building had been completely torn down overnight. Just like that.
Pics by Smiler
February 15, 2008
Frogs and Water Skiing
One kid caught a frog
Can you see how proud he was?
That was summer camp.
I don’t remember much about the circumstances of these pictures or what year they were taken in exactly. Probably ‘75 or ‘76. I do remember taking a school bus to get to that camp. Me and my classmates, all city kids. I’m fairly sure everybody arrived on time to take the bus and I probably made it there just as the bus was about to pull away. That’s would have been my style, and I did end up missing an excursion once that way. I remember having terrible motion sickness on the bus and feeling sure I was going to throw up and embarrass myself in front of all my classmates. I was immensely relieved to get off that bus, but then immediately realized I had all the wrong clothes on — my corduroys and turtleneck felt oppressive under the sun.
I think we were just there for the one day. There were kids running around every which way. I parked myself next to a great big yellow pedalo to survey the scene — it was all a bit much for me for some reason. I don’t know who was taking pictures or how I ended up with these prints. I do remember a bunch of kids running up excitedly and saying they’d caught a frog. The kid with the can was so excited it looked like he or she was about to levitate off the ground. I can’t tell if it was a boy or a girl anymore. Actually, I don’t remember who any of those kids are, including the boy wearing shorts standing next to me. But never mind all that. I was cool. See that index finger pointing up? That was meant to be a peace sign. But I could get away with that, because I was cool. Even then, you couldn’t tell how worried or afraid I really was, and it didn’t show the way I thought it did that I thought I was a complete loser. Because I just played it cool.
They showed us how to water ski that day. Each kid had one chance the get up on their skis, and one chance only. I have no idea what I wore to get in the water. Maybe my underwear for all I know. Or maybe someone loaned me a bathing suit. In both cases, I would have been deeply embarrassed. I wanted to go water skiing so badly. When it was finally my turn the boat took off and I ended up drinking big gulps of water, and that was that. On to the next kid. It was infuriating actually. It’s a good thing I got to try it out again much later in life, and I kicked ass then. Every time I lifted myself out of the water, I thought about the little girl who had been so disappointed not to get it at the first try all those years ago. That was just cruel on their part. They may as well not have shown us how to water ski at all. A few kids got it at the first try and the boat kept going till they fell over, and I secretly hated those kids. It’s weird to think all of them are grownups now too, with jobs and houses and families of their own. I wonder how many of them remember that day.
Three Things About Writing
It had been a while since I had been tagged with a meme. Then Colleen from Loose Leaf Notes remedied to that by asking me to list three pieces of writing advice. Her own advice is excellent, and why she chose to tag me, I have no idea, since I’m a self-taught amateur for the most part, and have yet to take myself seriously as a writer (then again, maybe it’s best that I don’t). Here’s what I came up with:
1. When you start writing a new piece, remember it’s just a first draft and don’t concern yourself too much with the outcome. When you’re writing out that first draft, just go with the flow, keep writing without stopping and don’t be afraid of inconsistencies or mistakes. Don’t worry about things like your spelling either. The first draft is like an artist’s sketch — you do it to get down the general idea and to give yourself something to work with in subsequent stages. There’ll be plenty of occasions to make necessary improvements and revisions down the line.
2. Don’t be afraid to experiment and keep in mind that it’s okay if things don’t go as planned. Sometimes we estimate how many words it’ll take us to convey a story, and as we’re writing it, we find out that what we thought might take two thousand words to say only actually needs fifty, and vice versa. If you really need to write in a specific format and your first draft comes out differently don’t worry about it. The important thing is you’ve gotten the ideas down on screen or paper. You can always make the necessary adjustments when you move on to the next stage.
3. Remember that writing is an ongoing process and that the more you do it, the more possibilities you’ll find. It’s not like any of us has a finite number of words or characters within us. Unlike a bank account, there’s really no reason to “save” your words because you can never run out of words and stories to tell. There are endless possibilities. Keeping that in mind should hopefully help free you up to allow yourself to try things, enjoy the process, and not get too fixated on writing a perfect piece each and every time. Chances are, when you’re not concerning yourself with false limitations, your writing will actually get better.
Voilà. That’s the best I could come up with today. I won’t tag anyone this time, although there are a few people I’d be curious to read on that topic. If you feel up to to it, please do be my guest, and make sure to let me know you’ve participated in this meme so I can your own advice about writing.
February 14, 2008
Thirteen Things I’d Like to Do [#12]
“Someday I’d like to...” everybody has their own take on how they’d like to finish that sentence. Today I’ll list 13 things I’d like to do. Mostly simple activities and hobbies that don’t necessarily require a whole lot of money and are attainable if you invest enough time and effort.
Someday I’d like to...
To view previous Thursday Thirteens, click here.
Pic by Smiler
Get the Thursday Thirteen code here!
The purpose of the meme is to get to know everyone who participates a little bit better every Thursday. Visiting fellow Thirteeners is encouraged! If you participate, leave the link to your Thirteen in others comments. It’s easy, and fun! Trackbacks, pings, comment links accepted!
View More Thursday Thirteen Participants
Paris, l’inoubliable*
It was my first visit to Paris. It was 1995, and I was 25 years old and already over the hill, I thought. I was working at an ad agency at the time and had decided to spend my vacation time in Paris, all by myself. I rented a dirt cheap room at a bed & breakfast on rue St-Denis. I was too excited to sleep on my first night there so I set out at about 4 in the morning to start exploring the town on foot. The first photo is from that first day. I had walked through the Jardin des Tuileries to make my way to the Louvre and when the legendary museum came within sight, I had what I’d have to call a religious experience. Which makes sense if your religion happens to be Art. I remember wanting more than anything to see as much as I could at the Louvre and rushing through the wings to find my favorite works of art, but the jet lag was closing in on me fast and pretty soon I was contemplating lying down at the foot of one of the statues in the atrium. Lee will remember this I’m sure, because I called her a few minutes after that to tell her I had arrived and that everything was fine, but before I could really say anything I burst into tears and said “I’m at the Louvre and it’s a dream come true but I’m too exhausted to continue with my visit, and there’s so much to see and there are so many things I want to do like take pictures and do sketches... etc”. I don’t know whether my mother was holding back the giggles, because even as I write this I find it’s quite a funny problem to have. Meaning: if that’s life a it’s worst, then things are going incredibly well, aren’t they? I can’t quite remember what she said. Something reassuring about the fact that the Louvre wasn’t shutting down anytime soon and that I’ll be able to go back during that trip or another time when I’m in Paris again, or something along those lines anyway. God how I fell in love with that city.
The weather was miserable during my entire 10-day visit. It was spring, but it was raining and bone-chilling cold every single day. I spent as much time as possible indoors, since the showers hardly ever stopped. That’s how I discovered the Métro because it’s so warm in there. The stations looked amazingly beautiful to me and I took what I think is one of my best photos ever. It’s shows the lights inside the station and is very blurry, so is quite abstract. I wanted to post that photograph too but unfortunately cannot find it. I made sure to dress warmly when I went out as I wanted to spend a certain amount outdoors to take plenty of photos — I had my trusty old Asahi Pentax camera my father had given me long ago which I took with me everywhere. I tried to pack in as much as I could. I visited Notre Dame de Paris and Saint-Germain-des-Prés, I had one of the best and most expensive hot chocolates ever sitting at a café at Place des Vosges, the oldest square in Paris, where Victor Hugo once lived. Then I continued on and spent the day in Le Marais, once known as the Jewish quarter, it now houses wonderful one-of-a-kind boutiques, cafés and restaurants. I visited Montmartre where I found the Dali museum, and took in all the exhibits at Centre Pompidou. I was trying to take everything in as quickly as I could. Everywhere I looked I saw beauty. The city itself is living poetry.
On my fifth or sixth day I set out to visit the Musée d’Orsay, which is here I took the second photo. Of course there was some magnificent artwork on display but I was especially taken with the building itself which is a glass and metal structure built for the Exposition Universelle of 1900 and housed a railway station until 1939. I had one contact in Paris, whom I called that day — the brother of a friend of mine whom I’d met once when he was visiting Montreal. I thought this guy was probably too cool to want to spend any kind of time with me. He was working for Paul Smith, an über cool clothing company and was a DJ on the side, traveling between London and Paris all the time for work and play. I figured making a call couldn’t hurt and he suggested we meet up at the Paul Smith showroom where he was working. The showroom itself was something to behold and I took a bunch of photos, though they didn’t turn out very well. After that, I’ve forgotten a lot of details but I do know we eventually ended up in his flat, a sixth-floor walk-up which he shared with a roommate though the place was barely large enough for one person to live in. He put on a record, either Portishead or Massive Attack, neither of which I had heard about yet, thought they became very famous later on. Between the music and the excellent grass he handed over to me, I was floating in a very nice space. He offered for me to stay there, said he’d help me bring my suitcase from the hotel and that would save me a little bit of money. I said yes. It just seemed like the natural thing to do back then. After that, it was one cool place after another. Cool house party here, awesome club there, outdoor rave over here, there was even a boutique/juice bar concept where kids hung out just to listen to music all day. Everything in Paris seemed so incredibly original and creative to me, I was eating it all up. And then there was a road trip through Alsace. But that’s a different story.
*Unforgettable Paris
Pics by Smiler
The Geek Squad
Now that I have a scanner again with my new HP 3-in-1, I can scan my entire collection of prints to save them from certain disintegration. That means you, dear reader, will have the great joy of being subjected to countless childhood and baby pics, all so my parents can see them again, isn’t that great? I’ll try to do so with restraint, I promise.
Here we have a year-end photo of the band I belonged to at F.A.C.E. in 78-79. F.A.C.E. (Fine Arts Core Education) was an alternative school where artistic expression was the main concern. Every student was required to pick up a musical instrument so I chose the flute which I loved, though I spent so little time practicing that every time we had a concert, I had to pretend I was playing to avoid making any sound and throwing off the whole band. At the end of the year, on the day the photo was taken, apparently every single member of the band was aware that we were supposed to bring our instruments for the photo. Everyone except myself and my little posse which included three other girls. I was probably distracted (as usual) when it had been mentioned. I’m the one sitting and grinning stupidly on the far left, in hope that my smile will somehow mask the lack of an instrument, while two of my girlfriends are sitting empty handed on the far right. Other than that little mishap, I can say I had the best school year ever while I was at FACE. It was good to be among a whole bunch of other geeks and misfits and creative types — for once in my life I actually fit in.
February 13, 2008
A Moon River Moment...
One of my favorite songs of all time sung by my biggest idol of all time in one of my favorite movies of all time. Hard to believe I hadn’t posted this yet:
I have a dozen different recordings of that song by different artists which I’ve been known to play on a loop sometimes. It truly does lift my spirits. I’ve seen the movie dozens of times but still hesitating to read the book. I know Truman Capote’s original version is quite different from the movie, which was considerably toned down, which is fine by me but I want Audrey Hepburn to be my Holly Golightly forever.
February 12, 2008
Out & About
Anyone who’s been reading my blog regularly for the past while knows that my “normal” routine these days usually consists of staying home, blogging more or less all day, and only getting out when absolutely necessary, which is once a week or two. Today was an exceptionally active day by comparison and I’m dead tired from all the running around, but it was worth it.
Here is what my day looked like:
9:27 a.m. Squeeze into my jeans, just barely. Muffin top again, yay. That reminds me that I haven’t shopped for sweatpants yet. Pack my camera and decide that even if I get just two pictures out of the day, it’ll be worth it.
9:47 a.m. Take a taxi to get to the loony bin for appointment with my shrink. I can barely sit in the cab because my jeans are too tight and cut through me. When I get there, my doctor is late as usual, so I quickly go take photos of the exterior of the building. The appointment is uneventful (other than confirmation that yes, I should get intensive therapy to work out my teenage years). I get a blood test and then I’m off.
11:32 a.m. The pavilion overlooks downtown, which is just a fifteen minute walk down Peel street, so I decide to make my way there, braving the -16C weather (3F). As it turns out, I’m appropriately dressed for the cold day today and don’t suffer from the cold. I’m headed for Chapters bookstore because after having blogged about Moleskines and debated their pros and cons, I’ve decided to treat myself to one or two of the pricey notebooks, figuring I’m due for a treat. I get a small notebook and a larger sketchpad, the idea for the sketchpad being that I will stop with this nonsense about “not being able to draw” and start doing some doodles or sketches or drawings in the coming days. I don’t know what I’ll use my notebook for yet, but I’ll figure it out. To write my haiku in maybe.
12:07 p.m. I take the metro two stops West to Atwater. I’m on my way to Future Shop to look at printers since the HP 3-in-1 I have needs repairing. I suspect it’s cheaper to buy a new one, and sure enough I’m told the repair would cost close to the price of a new printer, if not more. There happens to be a Mac rep on site who is all too happy to show me some of the awesome features on the iMac, a machine that practically sells itself on looks alone. Next thing you know I’m trying to figure out if I can afford it thinking maybe I’ll splurge and really treat myself. I manage to tear myself away from the luscious iMac all-in-one 20" screen @ 1199.00 by reminding myself that it’s a sizeable portion of a plane ticket to France and/or Israel.
1:03 p.m. The printer is a bit heavy for me and I have other errands to run, so I ask the store to hold it for me, then make my way to Office Depot which is 2-3 blocks away. This might sound silly but I loooooove office supplies; pens and pads and folders and rows upon rows of stacked and ordered packaging. I buy a whole bunch of pens and pencils, for all that sketching I’ll be doing soon. I also manage to snap a few quick pics on the sly while I’m there.
1:36 p.m. I make my way to my pet store. Ever since I found out on technodoll’s blog that the food I’m feeding Fritz isn’t as good for him as I thought, I’ve been wanting to compare various kinds of organic foods before making the switch. There are at least half a dozen high quality foods for me to choose from there. I go with Fromm’s Gold which is holistic food made by a family-owned company and is corn, wheat and soy free. Best of all, it costs about the same as what I’ve been feeding Fritz before. I also decide to try out a different kind of cat litter since I am forever trying to find the ideal litter that won’t spread all over the floor or create too much dust (causing attendant allergies) and won’t cost me an arm and a leg. It seems a corn based formula might be the way to go so I decide to try a brand called World’s Best Cat Litter. Now let’s hope Fritz is into all these changes too (and yes, I do know I have to introduce him to his new food gradually).
2:10 p.m. Having made arrangements to have the food and litter delivered, I head back to the mall about 4-5 blocks away and go to Guido & Angelina where I know they do a big arugula salad, which some of you might remember was one of my big food phases. I have the salad with grilled chicken, comfortably sat by the window and feeling like the spoiled princess that I am.
2:55 p.m. I have in mind to follow through on the advice I’ve been given and finally go buy a few pairs of sweatpants. I go to a store called Sports Experts... it’s almost empty, but for some reason there are no clerks available, save for two guys who look too engrossed in their conversation to help me. I interrupt them and ask where the sweatpants are, and I’m shown the section where all sports pants are. The clerk rushes off before I get a chance to specify exactly what I’m looking for. After much rummaging I figure out that out of the whole section, they only have ONE pair of warm, fleece-lined sweatpants in XXL which, thankfully isn’t quite my size (yet?). Everything else is mostly lightweight yoga pants and I own a bunch of those already. They seem to mostly carry Nike, though I see Adidas and a couple of brands there too. No brand x, basic, cheap sweatpants in various colours to choose from. I pick out one pair of the yoga pants which are cut like slacks. When I get to the cash, I make sure to complain to management about the lack of service since this sort of thing has happened every time I’ve gone to that store in particular and the chain at large. I have no intention of shopping there ever again if I can find the stuff anywhere else.
3:25 p.m. From there I head to Winner’s, which is a big discount store to see if they have sweatpants in stock. I hate going to that store usually because they have so much merchandise pell-mell, flea market style, and of course there’s no service at all. It’s all completely overwhelming for me, so I usually end up with a migraine headache within 10 minutes of getting there. Turns out they don’t have sweatpants either but they do have a whole bunch of very affordable jeans. So I pick up jeans twice as large as my normal size to try on. Two of the pairs fit and are comfortable and I manage not to get freaked out by how much weight I’ve gained when I look in the mirrors of those awfully lit dressing rooms. I change into the yoga pants I got at the other store because I fear my lower half may require amputation if I continue wearing my old jeans which are cutting my circulation off. On my way out I also pick up a cute loose fitting knit dress with large grey and pink stripes for under 20 dollars. I figure I can wear it with leggings, and the color will appeal to my inner child. I may just wear it around the house while I’m sketching all my fantastic new drawings, for example.
4:20 p.m. Back to Future Shop loaded with a bunch of bags to pick up my printer. For a minute I fantasize about bringing home that iMac desktop computer again, but I snap back to reality and quickly realize I can’t carry all my heavy stuff in the metro, so I get a cab which takes me back home.
Now it’s much later at night, I’ve ordered Indian food (papadum, samosa, dal soup, lamb curry, cucumber raita) which I had with a Newcastle beer, for which I made a trip to the convenience store — also unheard of. I haven’t had a proper meal that’s not composed entirely of fruit or yogourt or breakfast cereal or matzo ball soup in a long time, I don’t get out of the house AT ALL once I’m in AND I haven’t had a drop alcohol in seven or eight months. Truly, as much as it sounds like a normal day, of the sort that I used to have all the time before, it was anything but an ordinary day.
I think it took as long writing about this day as doing it! It was fun, and amazingly I wasn’t freaked out by the downtown crowds, and while it was a much needed distraction from all the heavy emotional stuff I’d been going through for the past few days, I don’t have the intention of making a habit of costly and exhausting excursions like that. But does it mean I’m entering a new phase? That I’ll be running around and getting outside regularly and doing a bunch of activities again as I should be doing? Who knows.
One day at a time.
or as they say in Greece,
siga siga
(slowly slowly).
Pics by Smiler
February 11, 2008
Quote of the Day
“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”
~ Oscar Wilde
Photos by Fort Photo and daita, Flickr
Repercussions
The whole topic of bullying and the repercussions it’s had on my life is something I had been thinking of posting about for quite some time now, but kept putting off, precisely because I knew it wouldn’t be a quick walk in the park to get through this time. Not at this point in my life. Not after the long months of depression I’m still struggling to extricate myself from. After my first post, I hadn’t intended on posting on the subject again, but with all the responses I got, with everybody telling a little piece of their tale, and then after reading the comment section over at David’s too, and after what I intended to be a short comment over there turned into another saga, I felt I wasn’t done with the topic.
I have to say that David Rochester’s original post opened up quite the can of worms for me and for some of my readers as well. Mine happens to be one of those giant industry size cans and it contains some mighty scary looking worms, bigger than I ever thought possible. Maybe they’re here to avenge their brothers and sisters whom I so sadistically enjoyed cutting up into tiny little pieces as a five-year-old?
I really bothers me when people say “But you turned out fine, you have a great life, you’re talented, you’re a good person, you’re beautiful, you have a great career...” but how do they know what I feel like inside? How can they imagine what it’s like to have my mind, my memories? There have been so many repercussions throughout my life, one bad decision impacting the next impacting the next, all because I got scared of the big girl with the braces who did cocaine in the cafeteria and had decided that her and her little posse would give me a little scare, just for the heck of it. Sometimes I feel like I’ve been to hell and miraculously made my way back. I’m grateful for that, but I can certainly empathize with PTSD sufferers.
God, to have a switch so I could change all the events that followed after that. Hundreds of times... thousands of times I’ve tried to imagine how my life would have turned out if I hadn’t veered so wildly off the track in response to the taunting I was put through as a kid. And then just yesterday I found out from my mom that I had never told her about the bullying before. For the first time after reading my post she understood why I had suddenly morphed from a sweet gentle soul into a kid with an attitude and a giant chip on her shoulder. She would have tried to find some kind of workable solution to deal with the bullies she tells me now. Knowing the person she is, I know she would have gone the extra mile too. To think all of it could have been avoided if I’d just spoken up. It’s all so tragic.
I saw that one of David Rochester’s commentators was very persistent about wanting him to start up a mentoring program for kids who are victims of bullies, and I could all too well understand David’s response. I wouldn’t know what to tell kids other than “don’t do what I did or you’ll regret it all your life”. I feel like an essential piece was taken away from me which can never be replaced. Who am I to be giving life lessons to anyone? Mentoring would work if I had turned out to be a happy, balanced and successful adult, but at the moment I certainly don’t feel like that’s the case. Besides, who has energy to be helping others when you yourself haven’t found your way back from the wreckage yet?
It’s high time I bring all this up in therapy. In the meantime I can’t tell you how much I’ve appreciated everyone’s comments. It’s good to come out of all that isolation and find some consolation.
February 10, 2008
When Taunting Goes Too Far
David Rochester’s latest post addresses the taunting he was subjected to as a teenager. It makes for a compelling story and I empathize completely since I had my own dramatic struggles there too. No matter what, adolescence comes with plenty of challenges for everyone and we all go through that phase of finding our own identity with a certain degree of discomfort. Less for some, a great deal more for others.
It’s true that David’s story is an unusual one, but equally true that kids will find anything to hurt and humiliate whoever they consider different or an outcast. In my case, the fact that I was the new kid in class with every school year was reason enough to single me out and torment me. I was overly sensitive and prone to tears which didn’t help either, because once they picked up on that, kids enjoyed tauting me even more knowing they’d get a reaction.
It got really scary when, at ages thirteen and fourteen, in two separate schools, girl gangs had decided to make me the object of their bullying. I never got to know why exactly. Maybe I looked too innocent and “pure” for their liking. Maybe I was too good in class. Maybe they though I had a funny accent. In any case, what they were threatening me with was serious. Whether they actually intended to follow through on their threats and do me bodily harm or not hardly matters. They had me running scared and looking for ways to convince them I wasn’t a good target after all. The result of that was incredibly destructive and much worse than the threats themselves could ever be, since in my effort to change my image to that of a “tough” and potentially dangerous kid so they’d leave me in peace, I went way further than I had originally intended, and pretty soon that persona took on a life all it’s own.
To this day I can’t believe some of the things I felt compelled to do all in the name of finding social acceptance. Soul destroying stuff. But then, nobody ever dared bother me again after that. Maybe someday I’ll find a way to forgive the bullies, but more importantly, it’ll be good when I can finally and completely forgive myself.
This Week’s Pics
Paperweights
My Desk
Desk Clutter
Book Lover
Tin Box
Candles
Pink Curtain
Too Many Magazines
All pics by Smiler
February 9, 2008
Love, unrequited
I find the fake sentimentality of the Valentine’s marketing season offensive; the bad chocolates sold a the pharmacy and cheap half-wilted flowers on every street corner depress me. If you’re trying to save money, surely there’s a more genuine way to express loving and caring to that one special person? And if a person has several “special persons” to buy gifts for, then I don’t want to hear about it, though I hear florists have all sorts of tales to tell on that subject. On another register, remembrances of loopy handmade paper hearts brought back from kindergarten, asking our mothers “Will you be mine?” always make me wish we’d kept things simple like that well into our adult years.
When you’re dating, Valentine’s makes for an awkward time. No matter what stage you’re at, inevitably it’s bound to give rise to the “what now” question. Say you’ve just met and don’t know if the other person wants to pursue... is this the time to get into that conversation? If you’ve been dating a while, what now, should you take things further? What if she expects him to mention the “M” word and the only thing he can think about is sex with her wearing a naughty outfit, or he gives her a little box containing the key to his house instead of the coveted ring? Those situations can give rise to tears of disappointment and bitter recriminations in no time. That would dampen any mood. I certainly wouldn’t want to be a guy on February 14th on any year. Who wants to deliver on so many unspoken expectations?
Married couples: I wouldn’t know what it’s like for them, but it’s a safe bet to say that if the marriage is solid, no matter what happens or doesn’t happen on that day is not going to have an impact on a healthy union either way. But if things are shaky, that must make for one difficult day to get through. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear there are as many couples who decide to get married as there are who opt to get a divorce on that same day. If you’ve just broken up and the wound is fresh, seeing those pink and red hearts everywhere feels like so many darts aimed straight you (here I speak from experience), and we wish we could vanish, mind, body and spirit so we wouldn’t have to suffer through a day celebrating all that is out of reach for us.
Which brings me to... Love unrequited. Most all of us have experienced it one way or another. As much as it hurts to be the lover rejected, there is also pain involved in being the rejector (unless you’re a sadist of course). Whether you continue communicating or whether you don’t, you know that no matter what you’re hurting the other person. But if the other persists once you’ve made it clear that there is no hope for love to blossom, then you just have to show some tough love and say what needs to be said — yes, even at the risk of sounding cruel and uncaring.
I say Valentine’s day could be a day to celebrate Love unrequited — maybe consolation prizes could be handed out to the candidates with a “close but no cigar” kind of theme. I don’t know if that idea will catch on, so in the meantime I’ve created the following collection of candy hearts that you can special deliver to all those admirers who just won’t quit no matter how many times you haven’t returned their calls. They’ll be sure to appreciate the gesture.
To make you own candy hearts, click here.
Best Friends
I received the above pictures as part of a PowerPoint presentation, with little explanation and an inaccurate attribution. After rooting around the web a little, I found the following explanation:
The rest of the story [and additional photos] is available here in German.
http://www.tanja-askani.de/info/?p=18
Spoiler:
Eventually when the fawn was old enough it was sent to a park where it would be released into the wild. The second to last picture shown here, shows how after the fawn had been anesthetized for easier transport and despite strange humans being around, the rabbit went up to the deer and supported its sleepy head “as if it were saying goodbye”
For my part, the best way I know to fend off haunting memories is with a strong dose of extra cute like that. It does the soul a lot of good.
Photos by Tanja Askani
Them
These people
they were not your friends
they didn’t care
what you would
feel like
twenty, thirty
years down the line
These people
they were evil.
As bad as they come
They fed you lies
And you needed
To believe them
Because otherwise
You'd have admitted
that you can’t always
give your trust.
For some reason
you preferred
holding on to an illusion
even if it cost you
your innocence
Some of them
they weren’t so bad
mostly ignorant
or selfish or maybe
they too needed love
Who knows
It chokes me up
I try to forget
So much easier to do that
Otherwise I have to admit
That evil does exist
And I lingered by
to see if it might catch
I choose to look
at all the goodness
so much goodness
in the world
If you choose to see it
But then,
Them and their sort
They come and cast
a deep shadow
They won't be forgotten
In my mind,
I've killed them off
A million times
One by one
With unspeakable violence
But they cling to me
As though I were
Their last chance
For redemption
I will not forgive them
I am not a killer
But I’d be willing to make
An exception for them
Just this one last time.
In Treatment
I’ve gotten hooked on a new HBO series called “In Treatment” starring Gabriel Byrne as Paul, a psychoanalyst. The show is a remake of a popular Israeli series called “BeTipul” and follows Paul through his meetings with his patients, who come to his home office for their weekly consultations. Gabriel Byrne’s acting is brilliant. I’ve been in therapy long enough to ascertain that he does a bang-up job of acting like a psychiatrist, with hardly more than his eyes and the muscles in his face to convey emotions. A good psychiatrist does a lot more listening than talking but that can’t be easy to convey for an actor.
Considering it’s mostly made up of talking heads, the show is filled with plenty of drama. This week along, the premiere starts with a bang with beautiful Laura, a patient of Paul’s for the past year, admitting to him that she’s been in love with him since the beginning and fantasizes about them having sex. Next is a cocky Navy pilot (played by Blair Underwood) who’s just been grounded after a mission in Iraq. He’s responsible for killing sixteen children yet insists he followed orders and is not affected at all. Then a sixteen year old gymnast and Olympic hopeful with two broken arms, which Paul suspects of being suicidal and having an affair with her forty-something coach, and finally a pregnant couple seemingly on the verge of splitting up who come to him to figure out whether they should keep the baby or have an abortion.
One of the recurring themes on the show is that all his patients come to him wanting an answer for one very specific problem and insisting they don’t need therapy, but they all get furious with Paul for asking questions which point to the obvious... and which they refuse to see, namely that their issues far outweigh whatever problem brought them to seek counsel to begin with. After a week of these difficult patients, Paul is confronted with serious marital problems at home, which sends him to consult with a former supervisor (Dianne Wiest), rekindling a complicated and difficult relationship, which makes for yet more heated discussions. All of that left me thinking... I don’t create nearly enough drama during sessions and I’m much too nice to my therapists.
It’s a great concept for a show, the casting and treatment are excellent, and while I can’t say it makes for light entertainment, I’ll be watching.
February 8, 2008
Fritz Inspired This
Always so weary
I look at Fritz with envy
tiny sleeping ball.
Is it possible?
so much love for that critter,
unrequited... yes,
but the privilege
he grants me when, unguarded,
his chin lets me scratch.
And how I savour
feeling his warm softness, when
curled up in a ball,
stretches out his paws,
displays underbelly, oh...
... Delicious moment!
He steals my heart just
like that. This is why I write
poems for my cat.
Photo by Smiler
I meant to say “photojournalism”
Nicole from Tickled Pink has published an interview with me on her blog today. Do go and read it — I’d love to have your input. Considering I was suffering from a terrible migraine and couldn’t see straight, I managed to do a half decent job of it. Wish I hadn’t written that Margaret 
Bourke-White was one of the pioneers of “news photography” when I meant to say “photojournalism”. But I think I can live with that. I’m just flattered to have been asked to begin with. Expect a post about Margaret Bourke-White in the near future...
self-portrait, during a WWII photo assignment, 1943.
February 7, 2008
Thirteen Things that Make Me Different [#11]
Main Entry:mav·er·ick
Pronunciation: \ˈmav-rik, ˈma-və-\
Function: noun
Etymology: Samuel A. Maverick died 1870 American pioneer who did not brand his calves
Date: 1867
1: an unbranded range animal especially a motherless calf 2: an independent individual who does not go along with a group or party
My therapist used the word “maverick” when talking about me during this week’s session and that surprised me a little, but of course, she knows me quite well now that I’ve been seeing her for over seven years. Seems it all started from the very beginning for me, and she was saying that we should always keep in mind when thinking of life options for me that I need to blaze my own path. Here are 13 signs that I’m a maverick through and through:
1. It started right at conception: my parent’s honeymoon “trip” sent them flying alright, but not on a regular plane; they were tripping out on acid instead and both remember the exact moment of my conception. Trippy alright.
2. I must have figured out that I had it good where I was, because I refused to come out of the womb on my due date. As a matter of fact, I was three weeks late and they had to get me out of there with forceps! Poor mom.
3. I have a gap in my two front teeth, which made me miserable as a child. Now it’s just part of me. But I still don’t ever give that toothy smile for the camera.
4. I’m a lefty, and glad they didn’t try to beat it out of me in school the way they used to in my mom and dad’s time.
5. I was fluent in three languages by age 8 and had lived on two continents.
6. I decided I wasn’t going to let my parents outdo me as far as experiencing life... and ran away from home when I was 14. It was just three weeks, but any longer than that, and I very well might not have been around to be writing this now.
7. I went to a maximum security youth detention center after that little stint. The judge told me I was a danger to myself and he was right. They released me after 8 months of good behavior instead of the year or two I had gotten in my sentence.
8. Even though I had skipped a whole year of high school by then, I was allowed to continue school in my own grade and ended up graduating at the top of my class.
9. I went to live on my own before my 18th birthday. In fact, my mother had to co-sign my first lease.
10. I didn’t go to university, but I was so motivated in my graphic design studies that I got a job before the program had finished.
11. What was meant to be a two-week trip around the Greek islands to mend a broken heart ended up with me living on Crete for five months, renting my own apartment and getting my PADI diver certification. It was awesome.
12. When our train got stopped at customs on our way from NYC to Montreal this year, we ended up being detained there for close to three hours with no access to food or water. I decided to do a yoga routine in the aisle to pass the time and unwittingly almost got the passengers involved in a protest. I wrote all about it here.
13. I’d never done bodybuilding or gymnastics in my life, but I decided at age 32 to train for and compete in a fitness competition — something I had never heard of before — and won. I had been assigned the number... 13.
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February 6, 2008
Glimpses of Oz
It’s two days after my little brother Manou’s wedding to Sophie G, and once again I wake up in my own guest-room at the G’s place in Braidwood. That chandelier seems like a sign it’s going to be a great day.
I took dozens of shots from the front of the house at different times of day. This one’s taken from a screen door in the master bedroom.
Sophie’s dad aka Tinsey offers to take Manou’s best man (who has also flown in from Montreal) and I to visit Monga national park which is nearby. I’m all set to go with a lovely pair of rubber boots that almost match my top. As someone is taking the picture I’m thinking “no way I’m showing this one to anybody, I look ridiculous”. Bah!
Mum in law and daughter Alice have seen the park many times, they won’t be coming along, but I get a chance to make fun of Alice for looking so sleepy just before we go.
As we’re making our way there I never stop taking pictures, especially when we’re driving around with views like these!
We reach the main road through the park. Of course there are Eucalyptus trees everywhere.
I wish I could add the soundtrack. I just love the sound of the water as it’s rushing by.
Since we’re in woodland, there’s all kinds of interesting moss and growth everywhere.
Doesn’t this one look like a painting?
One more look at the river before we’re off to see other things.
More to come...
Pics by Smiler
(save 2).
February 5, 2008
New Blog 365 Bling
I designed a few new badges today for all Blog 365 participants and supporters. If you’d like to see other designs, you can check out this page.
1. Vintage girlie-girl, just for fun... who can resist with an image like that?
2. For the guys (or gals who like them)
3. The most fucking boring thing I’ve ever designed, because someone asked for it. The first and last time I’m designing something like this - it’s too much like work and there’s not even cash at the end to make the experience more palatable. As a matter of fact, this is the first and last time I will claim it as my own in public.
February 4, 2008
10 Things About Publishing
In her comment to my latest post about bumping into a co-worker yesterday, Tiv asked me how the work I do in magazine publishing as an art director is similar or different from blogging. At first I thought this was a curious question because it seemed to me the answers were obvious, but the more I thought about it, the more I could see that for someone who doesn’t work in the publishing industry, the differences wouldn’t be immediately apparent. Here is my take on the matter:
1. “Publish”
Blog: The term “publish” means putting something online, usually an individual item or article. It implies little or no cost. Mistakes although not desirable, can be easily corrected after publishing.
Magazine: The term “publish” means sending entire issues comprised of many articles to a printer on a given deadline. This involves many more interventions on the documents and major costs for all these additional resources required, not the least of which paper and running of presses. Mistakes can have major repercussions and can usually be corrected in the later stages of production, though it becomes increasingly costly to do so, and they are virtually impossible to correct once the documents are printed.
2. “Magazine”
Blog: I consider my blog to be a kind of magazine experience in the sense that I try to inform and entertain myself and my readers, there is a mix of topics, which are presented in different formats and there are certain features which occur fairly regularly. Equal importance is attributed to text and images.
Magazine: A traditional magazine, whether it has a main topic or treats different topic comprises a mix of sections but also a recognizable format as to where one can find certain kinds of information. It’s meant to inform and/or entertain the readers rather than those involved in the production. The balance between text and visual highly varies from one magazine to the other.
3. Staffing
Blog: I’m the publisher, the editor-in-chief, sections editor, journalist(s), copy editor, creative director, art director, designer, photographer, etc
Magazine: Those roles are distributed to a staff which is sometimes comprised of as little as three, fifteen, thirty or double as much, plus many freelancers. and most of the players are interdependent,
4. Deadlines
Blog: No a single deadline and no budgets to worry about.
Magazine: Many continuous deadlines (for text, photography, layout etc) for each and every article with every new issue, and since each article must be worked on and looked at by several staff members, there can be numerous delays on said deadlines.
5. Coordinating
Blog: Involves no coordination, or very little coordination with other collaborators.
Magazine: Countless phone calls to organize numerous shoots with several photographers, or commission illustration or hire staff and replacements. Hundreds of emails every day need to be fielded, with most of the items either being "urgent" or "pressing". Many meetings to call and attend and lots of bureaucracy to deal with.
6. Requirements
Blog: All I need to do is show up at the computer.
Magazine: I’m expected to show up in an office most every day, try to get face time with the editor, who approves all my work, but is practically never available, supervise photoshoots in studio or on location, supervise design staff, make innumerable phone calls on any given day, attend meeting, approve countless layouts, invoices and other various items. Work on the cover and do an occasional layout, which I rarely have the times for. All these items are usually equally pressing and need to be done simultaneously, even though that’s not humanly possible since I’d have to clone myself.
7. Creative freedom
Blog: I basically publish whatever the hell I want to and don’t need to ask for anyone’s approval.
Magazine: Aside from the editor approving everything, there’s also a publisher who has his/her own demands which are usually aimed at pleasing the advertisers, increasing sales of ad space and selling as many magazine copies as possible. Both the editor and publisher are in turn expected to fulfill budget and sales targets to fulfill the expectations of their superiors. Additionally, each and every article and item selected has to correspond to what market studies show the readership to want.
8. Formula
Blog: I like having a readership, but I’m not dependent on it. I also don’t have advertisers to satisfy and I can decide to change the formula of my blog or the topics I want to cover anytime I want to.
Magazine: No fucking way. Brand recognition is primordial as is staying on message, unless there is a major relaunch, which involves many levels of approval.
9. Pressure
Blog: There’s no pressure at all.
Magazine: Must always be highly efficient to get each issue to meet high standards (my own and the corporation’s) and there are countless candidates who would do practically anything to have a job like mine.
10. Stress & Burnout.
Blog: No stress involved. Not conducive to burnout.
Magazine: Major and unrelenting stress involved due to the requirements of the job and also having so many people counting on me to make rapid decisions on a constant basis. Art directors are all creative types, high performers, very demanding of themselves and others and often put in positions where there is continual problem-solving required. Also, because taste and creativity are highly subjective, they all too often have to defend their choices and ensure aestheticism remain an important concern. In any kind of business environment that is always a challenging proposition. It’s not very surprising that art directors are notorious for having burnouts in their careers. Sometimes more than one. But of course it’s not supposed to be called that.
Tiv: I hope this answers some of your questions.
February 3, 2008
Bumping into Zaza
Wouldn’t you know, I just ran into Zaza*, my assistant from work, as I was taking out the trash this evening. I hadn’t seen her for months even though she happens to live just around the corner from me what with me hardly ever getting out. I like this girl a whole lot, but I have to admit that when I heard her call out my name, I felt trapped, caught with my pants down, in other words, just a tad anxious. Thank god I’d at least taken the time to brush my hair before going down there, because the truth is, I’ve never been this unkempt for quite this long before in my life. I was even self-conscious about having no makeup on, even though I normally wear very little of it, but just enough to look fresh and healthy, as opposed to unwashed, overtired, sun deprived and in remission from a long illness. For me, there’s rarely been an occasion that doesn’t call for mascara and lip balm at the very least. I was also worried that she’d I had nothing interesting to say. All this was going through my head as Zaza was making her way through the slush and snow while holding her grocery bags to cross over to my side of the street .
She just looked so pleased to see me and we kissed each other on the cheek the way us frenchies do, which put me a little bit more at ease. At least she didn’t seem to find me as repulsive as I thought I was. She asked how I was doing and what was new of course. Questions which fill me with such dread lately. I told her I was keeping to myself and mostly spending time on my blog, but I found myself apologizing for things that I have no reason to apologize about — that I’m not being a productive member of society or making any meaningful contributions. I guess much of my insecurity stems from the fact that I’ve had countless nightmares that people I work with — and there are many what with the countless freelancers I hire — are saying that there’s nothing actually wrong with me, that I’m just faking it all and just being an over-pampered princess.
I’m always so shocked by the radical difference between the way I see and talk about myself and the way others react to me. I wish I could learn to be kinder to myself, that I could learn what “having fun” means because it seems that the kinds of activities I find entertaining don’t officially fall under the “having fun” category. Not that I really care about being different than others, but it’s just that I keep wondering what I might be missing out on. Blogging to me is fun. I’m lucky that there are plenty of others who seem to think that way too.
Of course I asked how things are going at work. It took her a while to adapt to my departure, but everything is rolling along just fine now, which was good to know. Again, countless nightmares of everything going wrong while I’m gone and people cursing me for not having held the fort though thick and thin as I had done up until I couldn’t any more. I’m sure my boss is curious to know what’s going on with me, and what I’m considering as my next move. Zaza didn’t seem comfortable when I asked, but she indicated that she sensed the same thing. That would be normal — they can’t take any permanent decisions or give my job to someone else as long as I’m on disability leave, and I’m sure that must make a certain amount of planning difficult. They aren’t allowed to ask me any questions or put pressure on me that way either and I sometimes feel guilty about not being able to give them any indications. But what can I say, after all these moths... sure I’ve made lots of progress, but there’s still a good way to go. I wish I had some answers, but I don’t yet. It is what it is. I guess things will happen in their own time. No sense in pushing myself only to end up with another crisis situation when I buckle under another stress overload. And I do seem to have a knack for biting off more than I can chew. No. But a walk with Zaza now and then when the weather starts warming up again might do me some good.
I can say that these last months have finally taught me to accept that sometimes we just have to let go and see where life takes us. I’m not even a little bit curious to find out where this is all leading to right now. Only the future will tell, and I’m okay with that. For now.
* not her real name.
Some recent photos
I had to cheat a bit to participate in Weekly Winners this week. As some of you already know, I was out of commission for a while and taking pictures was hardly possible, since amongst other things, I was having trouble with my vision. I considered posting more of my pictures from Oz since there are plenty more to show (if there’s interested for them out there, let me know and I’ll gladly pull them out). Here are a few I had taken a couple of weeks ago.
When I said some of my pics were making me nauseous last week, this was one of them. It really bothered me that you could see my reflection and that I looked bigger than I am because of my sweater. And that the walls look so messy. Ah vanity!
A small section from a mandala in my living room. Great piece bought at Ikea!
Was he thinking the camera might be edible? Such curious critters!
I'm off to join my little napping companion soon...
Click here to see more of my Weekly Winners
Pics by Smiler
If you enjoy this blog, please VOTE FOR ME!
(you don’t have to leave the comfort of your own home
and I promise you’ll never see me run for congress!)
February 2, 2008
From my private collection:
My iTunes library contains some music which was passed down to me by Lee, aka my mum. She had left it there when they gave me their desktop computer before moving away, and I have happily kept most of it, since between her wide range of tastes and mine, we do often find some commonalities. Not to mention the fact that she was instrumental in helping me acquire certain tastes. I alluded to this collection to her recently and Lee was curious about what she had left behind, wanting to know what postcards from the past she was likely to encounter. I thought I’d share the list with everyone (by artist or composer and album) here since I’m sure plenty of others might enjoy some of these selections too. Do go ahead and click on the links to view the clips, perhaps you’ll discover something new to you or rediscover a great classic...
Some of these titles might have been mis-attributed and actually belong to me — I have had this computer for a good number of years now and my own collection has grown quite a bit over the years. However, as I was going my inventory, I kept stumbling on some titles which seemed to me like they were so completely up Lee’s alley so I thought I’d share a few more:
Of course there’s lots more where that came from, but I’ll be at this for the whole weekend if I keep at it...
Graphic by Smiler
Quote of the Day
“Happiness is like a butterfly which, when pursued,
is always beyond our grasp, but if you will sit down
quietly, may alight upon you.” ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne
On Vanity
After writing my last post on the topic of Hair I realized I still had things to say on the topic since my personal experiences didn’t fit the format (writing practice) and time I had alloted for it (15 mins). As I said in a comment to ybonesy, when I first saw that very word “hair” I was initially repelled. I thought of all those hairs collecting in the bathroom sink and many other unpleasant associations having to do with hair: having too much of it, too little of it, or it not being distributed in the desired proportions on various parts of the body. Of course when thinking of the significance of hair in society, we have the story of Samson and Delilah as well as Rapunzel which speak of the sexual powers we attribute to hair. A quick Google search on “symbolism of hair” wields everything from “Hairdos and Dont’s: Hair Symbolism and Sexual History in Samoa” to “The Phallus and the Outkast: Hair Symbolism of the Dreadlocks in Jamaica”, “Untangling Late Victorian Anxities: Hair Symbolism in Dracula.” and over 400, 000 other such entries.
If I had a better understanding of psychoanalysis, or at least took the time to research this topic more thoroughly, I could come up with all kinds of scholarly reasons for why it is that hair has such a strong significance to us all, whether we are conscious of it or not. This time I’ve chosen to simply recount a few of my personal experiences as pertaining to hair, which to me, has come to represent vanity, more than anything else.
When I was little, my hair wasn’t my main concern. I liked to keep it long, and for practical reasons I also liked to keep it away from my face and often kept it in braids and ponytails. When I was in ballet school, I tried to get it into a tight neat bun, but never did succeed quite as well as the others girls did, since most of them had their mothers to accompany them to classes. It was as though every class was treated as a small pageant about to unfold but I kept showing up day after day like the little ragamuffin that I was. I wasn’t particularly disciplined as a ballet student, but for a long time I blamed my not being accepted to the National Ballet School on the fact that my chignon was too sloppy (and because I though I was fat, but that’s another story).
Not very long after that came a very rude awakening. I became the target of bullies in high school, who though that I was easy pickings because of my long cascading tresses, equally long skirts, not to mention the Hebrew accent. One of them made some serious threats to me one day, and I got so scared I decided that cutting off all my hair and wearing jeans would make me ready for every eventuality should they decide to attack me. I don’t know what I was thinking because I mourned my hair for many months after that, and dreamt almost every night that my hair had magically grown back. Every morning as I was awakening, I would reach up to feel the bulk of it, only to find myself grasping at my pillow.
Several more years passed. Many different cuts and styles and a few color experiments along the way. I had just moved out of my parent’s house and was hired at a truly shitty job as a secretary for a pyramid scheme-type organization. I wanted out and my mom called me one day to tell me that her hairdresser was looking for a receptionist. They were opening a newer, larger hair salon and wanted a fresh young face to greet their distinguished clientèle. My hair looked terrible for the job interview, but I figured if they didn’t like it, they could fix it any way they wanted to. Not long after they hired me it was cut short again. Only this time I liked it. The owner was a master cutter and could do wonders with his scissors.
There was not much else that was exciting about that job, other than the fact that I got to hang out with the owner’s daughter, a true gem with whom I went out on weekends to the trendy bars on the Main to dance to the latest House beats. I would definitely call those my vanity years. I was all about looks, and not a heck of a lot of substance. It still amazed me that my mother had somehow indirectly introduced me to this scene. My mother who is one of the least vain women I know, and who has spent less time in a hair salon than I ever have doing taxes.
The short hair worked, as long as I stayed very slim. Otherwise my face would fill up and (I thought) the hair gave me the appearance of a weather balloon. This is what happened when I moved to California to be an au pair for the better part of a year. I let the hair grow out while I was there, took up ballet again, joined weight watchers which drove my boyfriend at the time — a French chef — absolutely crazy. His cooking was delicious, but everything was made with a least half a pound of butter and at that rate the weather balloon was swelling ever more rapidly. He liked his women very voluptuous, apparently. I quickly realized we were not destined to live a long life together.
I returned to Montreal, determined to make a career for myself. I became a student again. Many more things happened to my hair. Long, then super short, then long again, then cropped, and so on. I continued seeing one of the hairdressers from the salon I had worked with for occasional trims. A few more years went by. Nothing special to report on the hair front. I got maintenance cuts more or less regularly. I had friends who were good hairdressers. I rarely had to pay full-price for a cut, if anything at all. Suddenly, seemingly for no reason at all, my previously wavy hair became curly. They were nice curls, but I wasn’t especially pleased about this. I had liked it just fine the way it had been up until then. Eventually I figured out it was probably caused by one of the medications I was put on. About a year or two after I stopped taking it, things returned to normal.
Then I got my current job as an Art Director. There are a few perks attached to a capitalized title. One day I happened to work on a shoot with the owner of one of the better salons in Montreal, called Platine. I thought she didn’t like me much from her attitude during the photoshoot, but then she said I should come by her salon sometime. I did. She gave me a cut. It was superb. She said it was on the house. I protested. She insisted. I went back again, got streaks this time, along with the cut. Went to pay, the same little exchange ensued. I was very pleased but also a little bit dismayed. Did she expect something in return? Was I supposed to bring her expensive gifts? Give them advertising? As I kept on seeing her over the years, we developed a pleasant relationship, with me usually regaling her with my dating woes and her telling me about her travels or a recent holistic treatment she had tried out.
Then... last April. I had just left work to go on short-term disability leave. I was uncomfortable about going to the salon. What if she had heard? Should I tell her? Should I not? Would I be expected to pay now? And what if I ran into a co-worker? I picked a day when I was feeling strong and went. She gave me yet another fabulous cut. I made an appointment the next day for a pedicure. And then I didn’t make it to the appointment. I was having one of my “bad” days and had to cancel she didn’t seem pleased about that. I haven’t shown up since. It’s going on ten moths now.
I don’t think I’ve ever gone this long without a haircut. Mind you, I’ve never gone this long without a mirror in the bathroom either. Since the mirror decided to tumble down the wall (without breaking, miraculously), I couldn’t be bothered to put it back up. Having entered a period of introspection, it’s as though I can’t make room for vanity, not even a touch of it, as though I feel obligated somehow to be disheveled, unkempt. It’s the strangest thing.
The sign of a really great cut is that when you let it grow out, it still looks good months later because the hairdresser has respected the shape of your head and the way your hair grows, with all it’s kinks and oddities. I’m sure that in the unlikely event that I was forced to attend any kind of function I could still manage to look decent. Still, it’s getting rattier than I’d like. But then, when I think “come on, get a haircut, it’ll give you a boost”, it’s that damned vanity which stops me from going again. I was so much thinner the last time I went, you see.
No matter how I try, I can’t conquer vanity. Whether I get the cut or don’t get the cut, vanity and I are a tie. So I just keep my hair in a ponytail in the meantime. Eventually we’ll work things out, me myself and I.
Painting: Lady Lilith by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
(1828-1882), Oil on canvas
February 1, 2008
Writing Practice: Hair - 15 mins
I watched the movie “Fur: an imaginary portrait of Diane Arbus” last night. I was sure it would give me nightmares, but thankfully it didn’t. I did learn that I had been mispronouncing her name all these years, since apparently she insisted she be called “Dee-anne”. I missed the first twenty minutes of the movie, which I tend to do fairly regularly, because I’ve got the movie channels on tv and they’re on this continuous schedule and I just check in once in a while to see if there’s something interesting on. When I tuned in last night, she was just about to meet her upstairs neighbour Lionel. He suffers from a rare condition which causes his hair to grow at an unusual rate all over his body. At first he greets her wearing a crude mask that looks like a piece of potato sack with eyes, nose and lips crudely drawn on with a felt pen. When he eventually lets her see him without his mask on, his entire face and head is covered in this sumptuous wavy mane of auburn hair. I never had much of a taste for Diane Arbus’s work. Her fascination with all things strange and disturbing doesn’t much appeal to my own tastes. But still, there’s something fascinating in all that is dark and morbid, and I couldn’t help but watch. (Spoiler ahead!) When Lionel announces that he is dying, he also offers her the gift of a coat he’s made with his own hair, which she wears after he’s swam out into the sea never to emerge again. I couldn’t help but think there must have been some great symbolism to the hair coat, which at first, I took to be a hairshirt. And of course she would have wanted to repent after having had an affair with this Lionel character, cheating on her husband and letting down the whole family to explore her own hidden desires. I’ve never been much interested in Diane Arbus’s life and I found myself googling her up yesterday, trying to separate fact from fiction, since the movie is obviously not a reliable source of information. It’s surprising how little I found about Diane Arbus, the woman. There was plenty of her work to see though. But... I wouldn’t want to seek her out too much. Or have a book of hers laying around the house either. It all seems like the kind of stuff my nightmares are made of. I was lucky to avoid them this time, but I don’t want to push my luck.
Thanks to red Ravine for the prompt.
Wonder Food
My mum aka Lee asked me how I was doing today, and my answer was more or less along the lines of “much better, thank you”. I’m now moving away from a bunch of seemingly unrelated symptoms into the all too familiar territory of pms. Equally unpleasant but at least I know what I’m in for and for roughly how long. Is it just me though? Whenever I get sick, I wait in quiet anticipation of that moment when I’ll suddenly wake up feeling refreshed and energized, fully healed, enthused about life and ready to take on the world again. Instead, I get up feeling even more worn out and as I look at all the piles of “should’s” I’ve neglected to attend to all this time, I just get even more discouraged. I have to keep reminding myself that health is “the absence of disease” and not some kind of wonder tonic that gives you superhuman powers. Still, as far as wonder foods go, I’d say matzo ball soup just can’t be beaten. I’m sure a real cook would have made some kind of delectable variation of the following recipe for it, but I made it straight out of the pack and it got me feeling better all the same.
In other unrelated matters, I was most flattered to be asked to participate in an interview by Nicole from Tickled Pink which she’ll be posting today. I can’t guarantee that my answers make any sense, since I was fevered and more or less seeing double when I responded to her questions, but you can decide that for yourself when you hop over for a look.
Mazo ball soup by Manishevitz, pics by Smiler.
