eja_crepusculario's Xanga

Family.

Sat, 05 Dec 2009 21:47:50 GMT

"Intimacy is a really important part of photography, at least for me. I think we are oversaturated with images that are glossy and distant, putting a celebrity or star on a pedestal. There's something really beautiful about keeping things simple and intimate and the way they are." - Lauren Dukoff (below, photos from her book Family - there's something about it which fascinates me utterly, nudging me to follow her lead)

I increasingly want to capture the world/my share in it - the people I love, the beauty I see, the comfort I find, the light. Always the light. We watched the sun come up over the mountains today, from the top of a hill with a 360 view of the valley. Bundled and with blood still flowing healthily to our extremities from the trek up, we were warm as we waited for the sun to crest, for a time. After the blood slowed we huddled, half behind a huge boulder with increasing wonder and and exclamation as it inched upward, until - light flooded and we were all golden.

I raise my camera and lower it again when no one inhabits the beautifully lit space.

These past days have been mostly touched with golden beams; wide smiles from my housemates, frozen hands and faces for the four of us piled on a quad in the dying sunlight, three of us giggling fully clothed in a bathtub trying to warm up, two bottles of scotch and four glasses on a heavy coffeetable, guitars played, voices lifted and warm glances. Silly kung fu in a parking lot before a movie theatre sneak in and reading lights clicked off for the fourth night in a row of a good night's sleep, unhaunted by unmade decisions and silence. It is well.

It is so good to be well.

Wednesday, December 02, 2009

Wed, 02 Dec 2009 21:13:45 GMT

Lately, I've drawing and painting. Et voila. Below, some samples.

Paris Mime

Moleskin 85

The Best Of.

Tue, 01 Dec 2009 20:10:03 GMT

I'll send you picture so you won't forget me. Carry the fire we started.

(A mushy, brown peach id lifted from the garbage and placed on the table to pinken. It pinkens, turns hard, it is carried in a shopping sack to the grocer's, put on a shelf, removed and crated, returned to the tree with pink blossoms. In this world, time flows backwards.

The woman makes excursions from her small house, goes to the market, occasionally visits a friend, drinks tea at cafes in good weather. She takes needles and yarn from the bottom drawer of her dresser and crochets. She smiles when she likes her work. One day her husband, with whitened face, is carried into her house. In hours, his cheeks become pink, he stands stooped over, straightens out, speaks to her. Her house becomes their house.

A man stands at the graveside of his friend, throws a handful of dirt on the coffin, feels the cold April rain on his face. But he does not weep. He looks ahead to the day when his friend's lungs will be strong, when his friend will be out of his bed and laughing, when the two of them will drink ale together, go sailing, talk. He does not weep. He waits longingly for a particular day he remembers in the future when he and his friend will have sandwiches on a low flat table, when he will describe his fear of growing old and his friend will nod gently, when the rain will slide down the glass of the window)

Above, inside the brackets, excerpts from Einstein's Dreams by Alan Lightman.

I have this idea that the words, the books, the film, the art, which we love is important. That it contains pieces of who truly are - that these fragments contain real reflections. Sentiments we are unable to articulate are put into words by those more able, photos taken, pictures drawn by those with the hands we lack - not the inspiration.

Photos by Todd Selby.

Homeward Bound.

Sat, 28 Nov 2009 07:44:10 GMT

I am back on the road again, for a time, come January. Back to the only home that claims me - the prairies. I will spend the coldest month or so of the year between Regina/Winnipeg - tears freezing in my eyeballs, lips numbing and with at least (at least) one guaranteed, utterly embarrassing and totally painful wipeout. Flat on my back, cold in every direction, looking up at a bright blue sky.

The prairies are beautiful in the winter, blindingly white and endless - the pressure lifts in the expanse, letting you breathe. They're the setting for dreams and a beginning to a new year.

It is a curious emotion, this certain homesickness I have in mind. With Americans, it is a national trait, as native to us as the roller-coaster or the jukebox. It is no simple longing for the home town or country of our birth. The emotion is Janus-faced: we are torn between a nostalgia for the familiar and an urge for the foreign and strange. As often as not, we are homesick most for the places we have never known. - Carson McCullers

A Page from a Great Lady

Fri, 27 Nov 2009 06:34:43 GMT

Art/Archidossa

Thu, 26 Nov 2009 03:18:56 GMT

Images from Tim Burton's show at MoMA.

I find myself gratefully enveloped in the warm hum of life and connection - the ease of being with people minutes after you wake up and have been propelled toward the kitchen in search of coffee. The lottery are the days when someone has made a fresh french press while you were just opening their eyes and offers you a cup or half a bodum upon arrival to the dining room. No grinding needs doing, the water has already been boiled and the four minutes has passed - with a plunge I have begun my first ritual of the day. I love the sound of coffee when poured into a cup, any cup - the material from which it's made doesn't seem to matter, I experience the tiniest of thrills each time. Maybe it's simply the anticipation, but whatever it is, it is lovely and silly and I like it. With coffee in hand, one may sink into an ugly, yet incredibly comfortable couch and have a conversation with a roommate about love and life. How there is no us and no them, just a whole lot of people and a lot of beauty.

Or maybe, it is one's turn to make supper and after an exhausting day, with a couple hours worth of anxiety on the clock already, it seems an insurmountable task. No money, no groceries, no inspiration - but a partner is met outside the door of Unit A. We are both coming home and before we are at the top of the stairs, soup is settled on and there is a new, slight spring to be found in our steps. Supplies are acquired, rain has curled our hair and our bounty is spread out on the counter - ready to chopped, diced, etc. We make Zuppa Achidossana, soup from Archidossa (Tuscany, Italy, the world) and as it simmers, more and more people follow their noses into the kitchen. Thus before supper begins, there is happy hum to be observed, one that has not yet reached impatience. Olive oil from Greece, fresh bread and freshly mortared pepper and sea salt on a platter, bowls are filled and emptied, music plays, voices speak and dimmed light sets the mood for our nightly feast.

Contrastingly, I am often squirelled away in my room. Sometimes lonely, sometimes sleepless and sometimes quiet. Painting, writing, watching. Wondering. Awe-fully happy, and organ crushingly affected. A world of contrasts.

Tomorrow there is school and class and books, and always the rain.

The Snow Woman.

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 21:37:13 GMT

I love my room by lamplight - almost more when the halls and rooms are full of people. My antisocial tendencies have come on full force of late, often not as an escape, but a preference, which I am unable to fully explain. It is not that my heart doesn't swell and a smile curve to my lips as I watch people play and laugh and cook, it is more that I segue into observer mode, a way of being not at all unknown to me. Having to work to interact in a normal fashion and without massive mood swings and a slew of irrational thoughts around every corner, finds me slipping out of door ways and down a hallway to a room filled with books.

I ventured out of my room to refill my champagne glass filled with wine, spoke to old friends - old roommates, and after not long, ducked around a corner to watch an old illustrated film - The Snow Man. It was enchanting. It played on a sheet hung in the middle of the hall, obstructing movement, instead offering charming glimpses of childhood imagination. Down the halls, strains of music begin, I am drawn towards them and slip into a room already full. One of my million roommates is playing music to all the folk who have come to our celebration of the city Christmas tree lighting. It is raining and not snowing outside. Inappropriate BC.

Below, Beth (Man)'s drawing of a section of our bookshelf. The most non - booky part, that is.

Monday, November 16, 2009

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 04:38:06 GMT

Photos by Beth Mans.

I left and when I came back, the halls were decked with holly. All alone in the halls at 2 am. The yellow tinged light illuminated my tired shuffle to the back of the building and room 220. A movie done, a roommate gone out for a smoke break, I venture out of my room to heat the water for tea. Doors are open as I walk down the hall. Mark is recording in the pantry. Jamie is leaving the kitchen. I rifle through tea bags in the front coffee/tea room, glance forlornly at my empty mailbox, and someone is playing the piano in the entrance below. These are comforting things.

All these people alive behind closed, or open, doors, sounds giving the proof of their existence and inspiration. Tea pots still warm from the last person to heat water. Proof of life.

The December sun is dawning, and with it, crisper air and all that comes with such a month. The celebration of another year. There is always much proof of life at Christmas.

Marry Me, John.

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 07:40:31 GMT

Photos by Meg Kroeker.

Mine was one of seven bowed heads around a family table, hands by our sides, not joined. I was caught off guard, instantly grounded by words so familiar and simple. A moment taken to pause before a meal, grateful for food on the table before me, the smell wafting up to greet me - soaking in ineffable relief - is not something I do enough. Invariably, this is the response that rises when I do take a second to slow. It feels good. Grounded.

///

She pulled the tab fully intact off the aluminum can of free beer. She held it up in triumph to the small room crowded with bodies, not particularly caring (for once) if anyone paid attention or not. It was a mere confirmation of what she already knew. He loved her! Undoubtedly. Earlier that day, while reading words that confirmed the very same thing, it occurred to her that no matter how much she wondered and doubted and feared, they were inextricably linked. Each altered by the other in a way that meant they wouldn't ever fit with any other person quite right. Perhaps they could be comfortable with another, different, soul and certainly with time, the mismatched edges would rub against each other enough to make them forget that they didn't fit correctly in the beginning. Surely, the aforementioned process happens to any two people who choose to walk the same path, but what it is mistakenly chalked up to myth is perfect alignment of two people people carved from the clay. Corresponding pieces. She thought for just a moment about saving the beer tab as a reminder of her epiphany, but it wasn't the sort of thing one forgot. She placed back down on the table, smiling, and returned to her game.

///

“I thought I was through with this day. All I wanted to do was unplug the phone, pour myself a bourbon, glance through the clippings concerning a particular case, just to check, and switch off the lights except for the old lamp on my desk. Maybe I’ll fall asleep right here, in my office. So there I was, sitting alone in the feeble light and silence, when she came in. Annie. She did not knock before she entered the room but quietly closed the door and turned towards me. I was barely able to see her, but I could imagine her large eyes, her smile. She whispered an ethereal ‘Hello’, her voice mingling with the plumes of smoke. The night had just begun...”(Stolen from La Blogotheque)

Slices.

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 16:54:15 GMT