MakingHappy

Canisters

I took this photo about a year ago on a nice afternoon spent alone walking around and exploring some new streets. Someone had tied up these old woodgrain-look canisters with elastics and string and set them in the oddest spot in front of a row of abandoned houses. People do the strangest things.

I am posting this a year later because the photo reminds me of the kind of solitude I enjoyed that day. I like to spend time with friends and the people I care about but I need this quiet time alone without work or distractions to regain my perspective and sense of self when it gets lost. At some point I discovered that photography functions for me like a kind of meditation in motion; a way for me to remind myself of what I see, how I see it, and what that says about me. It is me whispering in my own ears.

I am writing this because it relates to this collection of photos I finally cleaned up, pulled together and put online and the words I wrote to describe my intentions behind the images. I think these words are pretty close to what I want to say about it. I call this collection Not Now, Not Ever and while I consider it unfinished there I times when I think lots of the pictures I take could be in this series. Except I am guessing no one would want to go through THAT many photos. At some point a person has to edit.

Song: Old Man Neil Young

Water (Purple)

Sorry if this big pic screws up my site.

This link is for a friend who says she prefer the sound of Elliott Smith live to the studio recordings. I like this show because he does not sound out of it and the recording is clean.

Muddy Tracks (Magic Light)

Seedpods

I know, I know. You hate the botanical images. You really wish I would stop posting flower and plant pictures. Concentrate on the urban detritus you say. Give us more people-less world! You think this plant photography crap is just that, inferior rubbish akin to photographs of fluffy kittens and frolicking puppies. Well, I recently created a 2008 calendar loaded with 30 photos covering this subject you hate so much. In addition to how-to text and gardening tips (written by yours truly) the calendar also features photos taken over the last year using an assortment of cameras running the gamut from Polaroid, to film, to digital.

Very sorry. Turns out the botanical stuff isn't going away anytime soon.

Taxi Parking (Paper Plate Sign)

Song: "Seaweed" Tindersticks

Reminds Me of Mulroney

As a non-driver I whole-heartedly support the public transportation system. My favourite North American cities are the ones where the city makes an effort to serve the needs of riders so that people of all classes ride the buses and subways and not just those without a choice. I hate to see a city's public transportation stratified by haves and have-nots.

But in my own city I have got a bone to pick with the TTC and one particular route, the Dufferin Bus southbound from the subway station. That ride is HELL. I ride it approximately 4 days a week and it is always a dehumanizing experience for everyone involved, riders and drivers alike. I rode that bus the entire line every single day for 2 of my 4 University years and while it wasn't enjoyable it was not as bad as those last few minutes I spend connecting from the subway to the Dufferin Bus. On my current route I connect twice to get home and the first two legs of my journey are fine. In fact all three legs are fine going northbound. But that last leg from the station to home is painful. Regardless of my mood I am almost always near the point of pulling my hair out by the time I touch ground at my stop.

Lately I've been strategizing ways to get home without connecting from the station anytime between 3pm and 6pm. It means a lot of extra time and walking WAY the hell out of my way but so far it has been worth the hassle because I get home feeling like a human being. I tried my usual trek today and was so beaten down by the experience I had to take a 2 hour nap on arriving home.

In conclusion, that is why the Dufferin Bus has earned the affectionate nickname, The Sufferin' Bus.

This Is My Property

Song: Here's an uplifting one, Second Chance by Codeine. I loved the "Frigid Stars" album when I was 20. I saw them play that year.

Hands

Today sucked. Let's just leave it at that.

Song: She Believes in Me Pavement.

Untitled (discarded flowers)

It's been quite a day. I have so much to say but my brain is also reeling from it. I am also tired having suffered a bout of insomnia last night, a direct result of a brain that was too fired up to sleep. I may be headed there again tonight.

This afternoon, I walked away from a work-related meeting and was suddenly overtaken with the very strong realization that I am a 34 year old adult human being with responsibilities.

First of all, Ummm duh. Secondly, this isn't a bad thing.

Of course, I deal with responsibilities everyday and in many ways felt like an adult with too much responsibility well before I should have. I think the difference is I am now feeling the weight of this not as a weight at all but as a challenge that I want to take. I am constantly working to define how I want to grow older and within that defining comes a call to action. I have high expectations regarding the person I want to be and am coming to a place where these expectations do not feel so scary or overwhelming but something I can do and do well. And being able to meet that standard makes it a hell of a lot easier for me to expect some of the same from other people.

On Sunday I turned on the CBC with lunch hoping to watch something remotely interesting while I ate. We only get a few channels without cable so the CBC is the most hopeful option on a Sunday afternoon, especially given that one time when someone said "Fuck" (sorry I searched but can't find that post). Anyways, the show that was on was about Farley Mowat and how he and his wife were bequeathing some land to the Nova Scotia Nature Conservancy. Friends of Mowat were interviewed describing him as uncompromising and intellectually ruthless. The word "ruthless" reminded me of a conversation I had with a friend one spring evening while stranded underneath the protection of a tree during a rainstorm at my community garden. She brought up the idea of being ruthless and my response at the time was the recognition that yes, I need to be more ruthless. Then I promptly forgot the word I had decided I needed more of in my life and struggled for weeks to recall what the hell it was. I was certain it could not be ruthless. Certain that that could not be the word I had decided I needed to embody. The drama wrapped up in the "forgetting" of this word makes me laugh now.

But coming back to the idea of being ruthless: This doesn't mean I should become an asshole. I'm not saying, "You know what I need? I need to start being a real heartless motherfucker!" It means that as a person with opinions, perspectives, and views I need to be ruthless in having a perspective, asserting that perspective, and acting on it. I need to be less afraid to put my foot down and take a position. As much as I have tried going the route of flattening myself into a seemingly safer middle ground it has never worked to squash my opinions -- I've just been more afraid to travel the dangerous ground that exists on either end of the spectrum (joy or rage) where passions are high. I am afraid of how people will regard me. I am afraid that feeling anger or god forbid rage about something will be destructive. I am afraid to be my parents. But the thing is if I am a thinking and feeling person with opinions than I am going to be passionate about the things I care about. Flattening myself into the middle isn't doing anyone any good. So part of being ruthless is essentially about being less afraid to push myself into those scary spaces where I might make someone feel bad either by being too happy or too pissed off. Neither are easy for me to express. I am equally uncomfortable with both. And really, when I think about it that's a pretty condescending way to live with people, assuming on some level that they can't handle the fact that I feel strongly about things either way and might express it. That expressing it is dangerous and destructive when really it might actually bring us closer together. Sure it will push some people out of my life but it comes back to the point about how that's not working for any of us.

Flattened, repressed people bumping into one another in a boring and flat world: I am so fucking over that. I probably have been for a long time I just needed to say it out loud.

West Indian Take Out

This image really goes with another but my site just isn't set up to handle multiple photos. I think about this a lot now, how I think of the photos in groupings and how posting them on their own often falls flat for me. Some of them are just stronger when more context is provided. I have always been overly concerned about context. My university essay intros were always too long and I have often subjected people to winding, painful meanderings to absolve my need to create proper context. Maybe I am defeating my original point in telling you this.

Someone who has long been publishing his photos in groupings is Alain Astruc. Davin and I spent a day with him on our visit to Montreal last month. He's a fine photographer whose images carry a strong emotional resonance. He is also a fine person -- we spent an easy day with him talking about everything from photography, to music, to politics very freely. Here is the series Alain put together of photos he took that day. I kept the little English lessons book found in a discard box on a tiny side street. The owner seems to have had a bit of a penchant for fantasy based on the books in the box. Or rather HAD a penchant for fantasy. Or maybe lived with someone who had a penchant for fantasy but then they broke up and he/she just had to get all of that shit out of the house.

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I could be going to see Oliver Sacks speak tonight. I could bring along my copy of Oaxaca Journal and have him sign it, just cause. But instead I have work to do. I am going to regret this later I just know it.

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Song: "Sweet Jane" I like the version on the "1969 Velvet Underground Live" album too. I go back and forth. But I often prefer the frenetic lyrics of the original version and the more authoritative rhythm. I love the ladies rolling their eyes and the ones who think that "life is just to die."

This Way

I'm feeling antsy and mentally over-stimulated. We watched a bunch of documentaries this weekend, all of which have got my head spinning with too much information to process simultaneously. We're thinking about going to the launch of GreenTOpia in a few minutes but I also feel like I just want to take advantage of the sun that has made an appearance for the second day in a row. I want to go for a walk, take the kitchen scraps over to my community garden, take pictures, dig in the dirt and make things. I have a lot of energy brewing. Last night was all anxious dreams about Work.

Yeah, I'll probably skip the launch. Sorry friends.

We watched the Lou Reed: Rock n' Roll Heart documentary again on a whim and it has left me with an unstoppable appetite for the VU this morning. All of his songs leave me with a feeling of hopeful melancholy that is sort of like weeping, dancing crazily, smoking a cigarette really slowly, taking a lazy afternoon nap, and running really fast all at the same time. So many good lines. From Stephanie Says, "Stephanie says that she wants to know, Why she's given half her life to people she hates now."

Untitled (wall planting)

As I write this I am also scanning film and watching a documentary about Nick Drake called "A Skin Too Few" online. It's in parts with the first part starting here.

Last night a friend enabled me to purchase a new addition to my belt buckle collection: a scorpion sitting on a silver platter. It glows in the dark. Beyond ridiculous but one requires such a thing in order to properly cultivate the right persona. At least that's what I tell myself in order to explain walking around with a dead glow-in-the-dark scorpion hovering above my crotch.

Noodles

I've been reading "The Accidental" by Ali Smith. This is that novel with the William Eggleston photo on the cover. It took me a while to get into it but I like the story and there have been some beautiful passages so far. Recently, the book has taken a turn that I am finding hard to get past. The writer has experimented with structure in a way that makes sense for the story but I find hard to take. Admittedly I am in no place to criticize writing. I had the hardest time of my life this week (slight exaggeration), writing a personal essay-style piece for a magazine assignment. I think I cared about this one a little too much -- extracting words from my brain was akin to pulling teeth. I have never enjoyed visits to the dentist but I like healthy teeth.

I don't have time left to continue contemplating the lameness of that last line (above) since I've been procrastinating facing this thing for the last 2 hours. As soon as I hit 'save' here I will take one last pass of the article before sending it off. I really like the first 400 words although there is a controversial line that I worry will be axed and/or possibly upset the editor. I'm more nervous than I anticipated. Hold me.

Tim Hortons Dining Lounge Redesign (Prototype I)

I've been thinking about the saying, "She's so full of herself" and how little sense that seems to make. Technically, shouldn't being filled up by oneself be a good thing?

Song: The Prettiest Star David Bowie

Sun Spot

This is the right picture for the day.

Cabbage

I'm planning to start a batch of sauerkraut this week.

Fuzzy Grass

I don't know the name of this grass. I don't think it is a Setaria or a Pennisetum but it has similar fuzzy seed heads.

I suggested American Psycho for our annual Halloween horror film viewing this year because a friend and I had been discussing seeing it again. We all agreed that it's a smart and interesting film. We talked a lot afterwards about complicity and the way a group of people can collectively decide on a reality even when there is overwhelming evidence to the contrary. I experienced this twisting of reality and truth many times growing up in a dysfunctional family. My friend suggested that some people feel more comfortable living in a confused or semi-confused state that lacks clarity and decisiveness; not really knowing what is true or not, what they believe or not, and who they are in that. I am still thinking about it but am inclined to agree. It was never clear in the film if what the main character was doing was real or fantasy because no one seemed to see what he was doing or hear what he was saying and evidence kept disappearing. I'd like to write more about this but I've got to run out the door in a few minutes.

I have been reading through this month's Special Arctic Issue of The Walrus. It's a particularly timely topic for Canadians due to exploding issues around the environment (especially with a leader who is not supporting Kyoto) and questions of Canadian land and ocean claims in the north coming into play more than ever. I heard somewhere not long ago that the suicide rate in Inuit communities up north is the highest of any place in the world. I would suggest starting with Sovereignty From the North by Mary Simon.

Song: More Nick Drake although I am still only interested in the Pink Moon album. I just can't get into any others. I really like the simple piano bits in "Pink Moon." I am pretty sure the instrumental "Horn" was used in more than one film. Davin recalled its use in Lynne Ramsay's Ratcatcher.