I want to ride my bicycle...

My lady has her makeup on. It makes her look so pretty. Not that she wasn't beautiful before. Her chrome frame has caught her fair share of eyes. The new cork grips just make her even more lovely. So I took her out on the town tonight. Nothing but the clicking of her gears and the sweat on my back. Gliding along the streets of Winnipeg with the breeze feeling pleasantly cool against my skin, we had ourselves a time. Now all I need for her is a name.

This was the perfect night cap to a nice slow day. I didn't start work until 11:30, letting me take time to enjoy a leisurely paced breakfast while listening to the new Starflyer 59 album. I love slow days for how they result in more time being allowed towards good meals. Fresh garden tomatoes appear to have been the days theme.

9am breakfast - Over medium eggs, grilled tomatoes and homemade apple rhubarb jam on rye. Americano and grapefruit juice.

10pm supper - Mini garden tomatoe and basil on cheddar pizza and a blonde Lefe.

Optimism

Not A Bad World, Is It? - Ed Ruscha

Despite the business and craziness of the day, I enjoyed it.

I feel like I came out of a battle unscathed.

Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it.

- Ghandi

I would never consider myself an ambitious person. It bothers me sometimes. Not to say that I don't have aspirations, I've always just been more of a relaxed, accepting of my situation kind of person. Ambition is supposedly the quality of all great men, so if I lack it what does that make me? If I was more ambitious, would things be different for me? Perhaps I've read too much Ecclesiastes, or I'm too accepting of my lack of ambition to strive to be ambitious. To be ambitious about being ambitious if you will. I have no concrete conclusions to this rumination except for some vague verdict that at least a little more ambition couldn't hurt.

It feels like fall is coming on rather early. I'm not sure that I have a problem with that.

New Westminister

I now have internet hooked up in my apartment, which I am pleased to say was not missed a great deal.

I guess the bigger news out of that statement is that I moved out. Yes, finally, at 27. I don't say that without a twinge of embarrassment raising its bright prickly head. So now, I call the east Broadway area home. The question I have been asked most concern the move is, "are you excited?" Honestly, no. Maybe it is that I knew I had the apartment many months before I could move in so it ebbed away before the move, or that the sense of relief of the event finally happening was greater. I think more that it just above all else felt natural. I feel calm. I have been enjoying the century old wood floors, white walls and large windows that make up the stage for my hours away from the world.

I know, general social conventions state that this should have happened quite a few years ago, but, I never felt that my wings were in any way constricted at home and so never pushed very hard. I had no impulse to escape a family, or a small town or rules like many people causing them to move at the soonest available moment. I have not used my lack of a superior to sow wild oats, or step across previously placed boundaries to test praxis. I never felt restricted in stretching my wings before, but I did seek solitude. To sit alone in my apartment with nothing but a cup of tea and my thoughts to keep me company has been a great joy. A different type of freedom I guess.

A rainstorm at sunset tonight made the sky a beautiful orange colour. For at least half an hour I watched the sky lose it's jack-o-lantern light through my tall, drop streaked windows. Alone. Content.

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I'd been pondering over this freedom/solitude motivation since I moved in. I came across this video on one of the blogs I check often (can't remember which one). It only seemed fitting to include it.

It's been too long. Let's get back on this bike and ride.

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If growth is the only sign of life, and change the forerunner of growth, then I must be living. Lots of changes environmentally and internally. All for the better. I feel like a coiled spring of opportunity, waiting to unleash in a burst of creative kinetic energy.

Shot a roll of film recently. My first since last fall. Much too long a wait, but very telling in certain ways. Quite glad to see how many photos turned out.

Love the colours in this one. Vibrant vibrant technicolour.

When the dog bites, when the bee stings...

Yesterday, I went down to a beautiful photo studio that sits right across the street from the Princess Grill in a just decrepit enough building in the exchange district. Level 3 Studios (as it is called because it is on the 3rd level of the building, how clever) was a very impressive wide expanse with an ever changing style of wall and flooring to create a photographers playground. The reason I was there was not to gap at the grandeur of the place, though I did, but to be the first participant in my friend Jarrod's project, "Favorite Things". That may not be the exact name, but we will say that it is for the purposes of this post. The mode of the project is to have someone talk about their favorite thing and to have photos in conjunction of the subject, in this case myself, with their favorite thing. (This is where the photos about came from)

Here in laid the interesting thought process. When you are asked what is your favorite thing, out of all your objects or conceptions or whatever, what do you pick? Is it your most valuable thing? My most valuable thing is my computer. If my house was burning down it would be one of the things I would grab. It is probably one of my most used objects. I wouldn't even grab my favorite thing if my house was on fire. But, valued or frequency of use doesn't help that object to vibrate at the same frequency of the core of your being. That thing, that seems to articulate the pining of your heart, or make it vibrate with more strength and inspiration, that is it. That thing that makes your heart rate quicken and your tongue loosen at the mention of it. That is your favorite thing.

After much thought and musing I decided upon GK Chesterton's Manalive. I have been equally entertained by wit and prose in other books (though Chesterton seems to be able to deliver more frequently than others), but never have I been driven to live a better life by any other work of fiction. A life defying the mundane, a life of fairy tale.

For the shoot I was going to borrow Aaron's copy as it is much more interesting than my own. And this simple action made me realize why I wouldn't grab my copy if the house was on fire. It's not the book that I'm connected to, it's the story. As long as the story exists in some form somewhere, even if just the inspiration still remaining in my brain from reading it, I have my favorite thing. My favorite thing is in a sense immaterial, and it's avatar is the copies that exist.

Get some coffee in me and my mind can go many places.
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Here is a painting from Value Village that I got in a gift exchange. Miriam, Aaron and myself had a little fun with it.

click it so that you can see it in more detail.

Love Dancing Her Like Cake

These made my night. They are composed by the Avin, the 4 year old daughter of my friends Joel and Maribel. The magnetic letters that adorn their fridge are her creative word playground. Only a child could think up these smile inducing phrases.

sorry for the low quality. all i had was my cell phone.




There was one more that I couldn't photograph because of the limitations of my phone. It said, "She said to go plant a cat out in the sun".