The sun is finding its angles.
Relishing.ca
working on the re-write…
Galling
One time, this boy I know proposed with a quartz ring on his front doorstep because, three months after he and his girlfriend had announced their engagement, she was getting a little desperate to have something to prove it.
As we all know, these aren’t the sort of things you should take for granted, especially when your excellent spouse-to-be has given you the benefit of a definite “yes.” Imagine. Boy has the thing locked DOWN, and he still has the gall to drag his heels. Improvise.
So even though, patient girlfriend that she was, she took him into her arms, told him the answer was still yes, her gentle concession would be: Make it up to me sometime.
Which all women perfectly understand to mean: Make it up to me quickly.
Three. Years. Later.
With the ring he should have used the first time, boy arranges circumstantial proof: Girl got a proper proposal. And this time, it’s on film.
The Kicker: You would be delighted to have Marc Boucher photograph the moments in your life. I should know.
Warm Glow
It’s what economists use to refer to things that do not have market value; warm glow. You might call it happiness. And it is what grips Canadians today, welcomed into March with a spirited breeze and the confidence to say that, at least for now, the game is ours.
It feels damn good.
What does not feel good at the moment is a pinched nerve I’ve been trying to deny out of existence in my lower back. I’ve started a new program, and my first ambitious week bit me quite literally in the ass. I am admitting this proactively in a sincere effort to swallow some humble pie. I’m no Sidney Crosby. Thank god.
Speaking of lighting.
A few weeks ago, D-man made real good on that whole “husband” thing and surprised me with a photo shoot with a REAL photographer to do what my FAKE photographer (i.e., my tripod) has been attempting to do indoors, and without the benefit of a brain.
Marc Boucher did an extraordinary job, not only in finding a way to make me comfortable, but in making me pretty darned pretty as well. I’m not giving Marc short thrift here, but let’s say the long version gets its own air time, yeah? In the meantime, may I present:
À la what I wore: Magazine Edition
Jacket: Nature vs. Future from Green Tree Eco Fashion in Westborough.
Blouse: Anthropologie, gift from mom
Blue Dress: Lousje and Bean
Crinoline: Value Village
Darcy is wearing:
Shirt: Custom, Viet Nam
Vest: Custom, Viet Nam
Shoes: Fluevogs, gift from me
Cuff links: Custom, wedding gift from my sister
Makes cent*
I will leave Olympic commentary to the experts, and to CTV, who is probably doing its best to minimize the awkward silences, and the totally inappropriate segues that result. (And to get Jon Montgomery to stop swigging beer on national television. Dear Manitoba, make this man your Premier). But if there was something driving me slightly up the wall, it’d be Quebec’s rather horrible tourism ads.
Now, I evoke the two solitudes very seldom, and almost never in defense of the Bard’s language. But with all the flapping over how much and how prominent and how, uh… well pronounced the opening ceremonies were in French, it just smacks of irony that Quebec would position a tourism ad to air that ends in this gem of translational oversight: Providing Emotions Since 1534.
Right.
I did not win $42 million on Friday. This was evinced by a very rare bus trip out to suburbia to see Avatar in 3D on Saturday. Trips to the suburbs make us giddy. It so swiftly becomes a landscape of parking lots and shiny box stores with inviting bubble letters. Stepping off the bus at the Gloucester Centre, it took D-man less than six seconds to identify the Burger King outlet right in the movie theatre and declare that he’d be getting a Whopper.
Health care workers of the world, I submit: The fast food chains are winning.
The last time we had Burger King was in Santiago, at the end of an 800km pilgrimage. I suggested to Darcy that perhaps, in that light, we did not deserve it. “But I made it all the way to Gloucester!” he insisted, and I had to concede the comparison.
I have been itching for good weather, principally so that I can engage more enthusiastically in photography outings. I feel such a bloody amateur most days and am sincerely interested in learning. But the great line of demarcation in the photography world seems to rest on approach; either you’re a tech geek, or you’re a flighty artiste. Count me the latter. And not because I don’t see tremendous value in discussing the luminosity of axis variable whatever, described best on a series of charts that are painfully difficult to read, given that they are the work of VISUAL artists.
And since the camera shops within shooting distance (zing!) tend to be populated by the former, well. There are many a times I leave fully deflated, because all I wanna do is shoot starlight, and all they wanna do is tell me why my lens is inferior in its treatment of long exposure noise reduction.
I say this with love, but techies, you are STRESSING ME OUT.
So for now, it’s indoor shots of my most recent superfluous creation: an ode to the Olympic Red Mittens. I wasn’t sure I loved them when my Dad brought me a pair in November, but they have grown on me, and on the rest of the world, too.
This cake is all sorts of clever; intended as a Team Canada appetizer, the tort lining is filled with Skor bits. SKOR bits.
Damn. I should write tourism ads.
* This is my 100th post.
In Balaka
Tamara, the Peace Corps worker, was already drunk. It was dusk on the corner of dirt road and nowhere.
We propped up candles in their own drippings in a mud shelter with a concrete floor, huddled around a sturdy and well-stocked beer crate. Grown men shooed away clamouring children, claiming they would steal from us. They themselves merely waited; we were buying, anyway.
Tamara’s husband – not drunk – sat with us on the fringes of the conversation. We had managed to gather seven white people in the heart of blackest Africa and still could not remove ourselves from sycophantic deference to democracy, human rights. “What you don’t understand….” said someone to someone else. Darcy opened another beer, passed it to me, smiled.
My eyes left the conversation just before my heart did, a sudden gust kicking up dervishes so tall, they darkened the sky. Debris and clutter flapped violently, children squealed; their small voices echoing in the vacuity of all the things we cannot understand.
Game on
The nation’s MC, Rick Mercer, got it right in his weekly rant: the world is about to go ape-shit over Vancouver. And why not? My last trip there – for Expo ’86 – imprinted memories far beyond the mental grasp of a nearly-six-year-old. Cathedral Forest plays like a silent movie in my mind; the last scene, a blinding silver white line, painting the way forward. There were no other cars on the long ride home.
So I’ll suffer through the terrible commercials, grip my seat through sports I know nothing about, and marvel at these athletes who go so much further than I have ever gone in pursuit of a single, articulated goal. There are feats of humanity far greater than those recorded on the scoreboard going on, here. Let’s watch, shall we?
Carefully side-stepping the painful segue of This Land is Your Land, let me bring it back to O-town, where gripping cold mocks the plight of Cypress Mountain. It’s Winterlude, or something. Props to the dogged enthusiasts at the NCC, and all, but holeee moleee I don’t care. It’s not your fault. It’s just February. And I want my damn sandals back.
Some notables: Younes Bounhar. File under: instances where an online blogger just happens to share the name of a work colleague, thus provoking a rather cautionary exploration into each others’ online life. Seriously, though. YOUNES BOUNHAR? How many of those can there be in the world? (Or so he chided me). Also, how awesome are his parents for channelling bohemian fringe? I aspire to introduce him at fancy cocktail parties in the near future.
Other photographers I might have a crush on? Marc Boucher for starters. But allow me to leave you in suspense just a while longer.
I’m still a materialistic bitch:
1) A Chirstmas gift certificate recently got me the Here I am (Harem, get it?) pants from Lulu. They are magically-flattering. 2) I am eternally searching for the perfect travel dress. This might be it. 3) Anthro has some amazing swimsuits. Hello, Marilyn. 4) Marc Boucher! 5) Two years ago today. Wow.
Brick red
I bracketed my heart out this afternoon, and as it just so happens, I like them better when they aren’t High Dynamic Range treated. Makes me think harder, frame better, concentrate. Here they are in their original format.
I’ve put up the HDR test shots on Flickr for reference. They are watermarked because I am using Photomatix on trial, which succeeds in being very user-friendly and fast.
Thorough Light
I am living for the 20 minutes after five o’clock that are not utterly dark; ricocheted sunbeams eeking through the Laurier wind tunnel, cement still warm from the memory of direct sunlight. I cannot yet make it home before the sky turns uniform and grey, but for those 20 minutes, life is good.
Life is also just a little bit better for Ottawan Arev Manoukian, who recently won LG’s 5-minute short film contest. I watched it last night; worth it just for the lighting, and really, haven’t you got 5 minutes? You do, don’t you?
So, the bank account is on its usual winter prorogue, but if I had money I wanted to spend, it’d be on a new Crumpler camera backpack; I have been goaded into taking the D90 on the upcoming Central America mixer. Why else do you have it, wife? He asked. To look cool on the streets of exceptionally clean developed countries where there is no risk of banditos? I retort. Bids on whether and how this becomes a kind of stupid idea welcome in the comment section.
Other things I’m thinking of doing that are kind of stupid: The 100 Strangers project. Question: What is the likelihood that perfect strangers on the street will a) consent to being photographed and b) let me post their photo on the internet? Are you even reading this anymore? Have I not proven my point? Defeated on the starting line: Curse you, paranoid Ottawa.
For your walk home, sunshine or not, I recommend: Dire Wolf, Girlfriend, and Mr. Richards, that saucy boy.
Beyond
I could start with vague platitudes about how last year was a year of discipline, of steady but tedious progress in parts of the astrological chart more strictly in line with society’s vision of … what? I don’t know. But I hear it comes with a mortgage.
But the truth is, in my heart, I am a traveler. And much of the hard work I have done in my life has been motivated by that burning passion.
And when you’re lucky enough to know your passion, you better not be stupid enough not to pursue it. Doggedly. No matter how much your parents want grandchildren.
Three weeks. Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica.
Finally, I am free again.