The things we cannot help

... even if we wished that everything were different.
still i have to turn your pictures upside down so I never see you again.

The kind of person I am...

Yesterday I pulled out a vintage bed-sheet that I had shipped back from the UK. I'm the kind of person, apparently, who likes to sleep on vintage sheets and does not mind shipping them from one continent to another. It cos 2.99 pds, with the Oxfam price tag still on it - so I never used it while I was there. It's very thick. I made my bed with precise folded corners, held together on the underside of the mattress with two safety pins in each corner. Then I pulled out some some pillow cases - also vintage. I put my IKEA pillow into a linen pillow protector (just an extra pillowcase that is unadorned) and then into a white cotton Oxford pillowcase with a trim.

As I was doing all this I wondered if others also take their bed linen across oceans. I'm particular about the quality of bed linen, and find vintage ones better value for money and usually more aesthetically pleasant. In Taiwan I still have a very large queen-sized linen top sheet embroidered with pale pink cherry blossoms across the the top edge (from Paddy's shop). One day when I have a queen-sized bed (and hopefully someone to share it with), I will enjoy it to a disproportionate degree. I'll probably even blog about it.

Arrived

With the help of good people I have now arrived in my new home in The Beach (or The Beaches, depending on who you talk to). It's an area down near the lake-front in Toronto - like a little village of its own. Loads of nice shops, coffee places, restaurants, beautiful homes, families, dogs, and parks. I'm just around the corner from a coffee shop with wifi, next to a decent looking pub, a bookstore, a library, and 5 minutes from the boardwalk by the water.

A part of me can't quite believe my luck, having arrived here.

Just a bit ago I was at home, unpacking my boxes. Three of them were packed up in June in Oxford and had been sitting at my previous address in Toronto for two months while I hunted for flats and waited to move. As I hung up the clothes from the UK with my stash which had been left behind in Toronto I felt these two phases of my life converge. It's strange now to think of myself as split only between two places - Taipei and Toronto, rather than three (Edinburgh/Oxford, Taipei, Toronto).

Obviously I'm not actually split into two or three chunks - but the distribution of my worldly possessions is effectively a scattering of my life. I guess the flow of my material life reflects my wanderings, and are the most tangible signs of my 'belonging' in one place or another.

More than anything else it feels like my stint as a foreign student in the UK has now most definitely come to an end. I am (in part) sad to see it go, but I am also glad to have signed a one year lease and happy to know that I can stay put at least for a while. Removing myself from the goal-oriented, secure, and surprisingly unchanging routine of academia (with its own seasonal cycles complete with deadlines and parties and expectations), has been really difficult. Often I feel disoriented and uncertain of myself - if I am working hard enough, or even working at the right things. Without termly assessment & feedback, how am I to measure my achievement (if any) and performance? (rhetorical question). It's like the structures which held the shape of life together has fallen away and I have to personally make sure that things are held together through my own devices.

Undoubtedly this is a feeling I will grow accustomed to...

Here are some photos to share with you.

A beautiful late autumn street scene, just down the road from where I live.

This amazing house has a metal installation around the porch. I think it is a version of Hokusai's painting of waves. I was ever so impressed.

A marvellous vintage truck parked outside the greengrocer's. Made me think of my friend Paul from London, who's very into dancing balboa, and vintage trucks.

Now for a little tour around my studio flat/bachelor apartment.

The entry way, with some of my shoes lined up, a closet, and my hatbox.

A part of the main room, with a low table, various possessions, and Richard's boater hanging on a picture-hook.

My closet. It's a little on the narrow side. I found some clothes that Maria gave me when I was packing - which I had previously forgotten about. Thanks Maria! Those woollen things will come in handy now :)

Here's the other side of the main room, with my computer desk (sans computer), my lamp, bed, and my free standing shelf where I keep all my art/craft supplies.

Finally, my dinky kitchen and bathroom. I can't stand up straight in my bathroom - the floor is raised (not sure why). It's very cramped, but I am definitely smaller than the previous tenant, so I'm sure I'll manage.

Please, do come and visit.

More dreams

Do you have dreams which recur? or themes of dreams which recur?

I often dream that I am driving. I don't know how to drive. I've never even driven except once when my high-school boyfriend tried to teach me to drive his manual Honda civic in the parking lot of a mall, and once even before that when my father let me back the car out of the garage (this one went rather badly - the car ended upon the lawn). I've never taken a driving test - not even just to get a learner's license.

Why? I've always found that I can manage without.

In my driving dreams I am always just about able to steer the vehicle. I seem to be able to fake it and other motorists don't notice. Only I know how close I am to disaster. In these dreams I am worried that something will soon go wrong - either I will crash or get pulled over and be in trouble. In my dream I also think about how I should really stop driving, and also learn how to drive.

Dreams and other stuff

Last night I dreamt that I was living in a very tall house with windows and I had to escape from something. I don't know what it was. My family advised me that I should just fly away. According to my dad if I jumped out of the highest window I would be able to fly. I maintained that this would probably result in instant death. In my dream there was also a guy around who was a family friend. My dad asked me if I was going to break up with him and I asked how I was suppose to break up with him since I'm not going out with him anyway. My dad said 'Why don't you go out with him? Don't you like him?', at which point I I started crying and said 'I want Richard back'.

Then I woke up.

I also received a box in the post yesterday. I'd posted a bunch of things to myself from Edinburgh, when I moved out of Topher's flat. It's full of momentos from our relationship - photographs and toys he'd bought me and stuff. I opened it earlier today and it's still sitting here. I don't know what to do with it and can't really bear thinking about it right now.

All in all, a pretty emotional kind of day

Some new sketches

So I've not put any of my sketches on here because I'm too ashamed of them. But today I had two which I was proud of (in the way that parents are proud of ugly children). They're really not much to write home about, but believe you me, they're an improvement to things I was producing a month ago!

So here's one that's done with white conte on black paper.

I didn't have time to do tonal blocking on the fabric covered stool the model was sitting on. So it stayed as a gesture. But I kind of like it that way. In fact, I hate tonal blocking. Probably because I'm so rubbish at it. I really like gestures though. Oh and I hate doing faces.

Here's a second pose. Vine charcoal on white paper. I took photographs at 3 stages.


So this is stage one. You can see that one of her legs is still just scribbles. Unfortunately the camera didn't focus so well cos I was in a hurry and wobbled. She was also leaning on a cane (which is invisible). I don't like drawing canes because I think they look stupid. For some reason our models usually end up with a cane at some point. Sigh.


This is the second stage. I've keyed in the landmarks (shoulder & hips etc.) and filled in the figure accordingly. I liked it best at this stage.

I don't like the end product so much. It's not complete of course - we never get enough time to really work it to completion. But anyway I like the gestural stages much better.

I keep intending to go along to life drawing without instruction - that should be good practice. I have another life drawing class tomorrow too, which I'm looking forward to :)

Remember...

The Blazer? Skye? Scoraig?

Things were better then. What changed? and why can it not change back? I miss the people we were.

I just wanted to say...

One day I felt unwell and stayed at home alone; Katya and Sonya had gone with him to Nikolskoye to look at the new building work. The tea-table was laid, I went downstairs and, while waiting for them, sat down at the piano. I opened the Sonata quasi una Fantasia and began to play it. No one could be seen or heard, the windows to the garden were open, and the familiar, sadly festive sounds rang out through the room. I finished the first movement and quite unconsciously, out of old habit, looked round at the corner where he once used to sit and listen to me. But he was not there; the chair, long unmoved, stood in its corner; but through the window one could see a lilac bush in the bright sunset, and the evening's freshness was pouring in through the open windows. I leaned both my elbows on the piano, covered my face with my hands, and thought. I sat like this for a long time, remembering with pain the old days that could never return...

'Family Happiness,' The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Stories by Leo Tolstoy. Trans. David McDuff and Paul Foote. Penguin, 2008. p. 83.

I too, still feel your absence from my life. Take care, my friend. I hope you are well.

What I'm doing these days

These days I find myself often being quite busy in one way or another. I had thought that once I left the crazy academic schedule of Oxford, my days would calm down a little bit. But somehow even though I am not nearly as productive as I was in Oxford, I am still busy? It's better this way though - too much time to think is never a good thing for me. I tend to be happiest when I am productive (and most frustrated if I am busy but unproductive). Of course commuting in this big city takes a chunk out of my day (1 hour down-town and 1 hour back up, minimum).

Anyway I wanted to show you a little bit of what I've been working on for the last two or so days. In my Photoshop class we were asked to make six 6x6 inch themed squares. The themes are based around 'elements of design' - for instance, lines, texture, colour etc. We are fairly free to interpret that as we would and use whatever means we can. I've done five so far and am stuck for ideas for the sixth...

This one is themed around texture. It started out life as a photograph of an parking alley linking two roads near Spadina and Adelaide in Toronto. I went to Google maps and got a very zoomed out satellite image of the city streets, and put it into the picture to give it texture. I quite like how the colours turned out too.

This one is theme around plane. It's made from a photo I took, again around the Spadina and Adelaide area. I didn't put the shoes on the hydro-pole - they were what made me stop and take the photo though. I outlined the building with black lines, got rid of the building itself, made the hydro-pole and shoes black and white, and then intensified the colour of the sky.

This one is themed around lines. Though the way it worked out in the end it could also have been a colour theme I suppose. It started out as a picture I took of buttercups on Port Meadow, Oxford. The original was wide angle and had a lot of the meadow and sky. I cropped it and made the background black and white. I intensified the colours of the one buttercup in focus, and cut the picture into strips and rearranged it. Then I did something with layer blending modes though I can't quite remember what.

(I still remember the day I took this picture. I thought we were going to row at Godstow but instead we were down at the Isis. When I realized I hauled ass down the canal and made it there a quarter of an hour late. I got a worried phone-call from Ross on the way. He called me 'Hong' - which is how I knew he was in coach-mode.)

This one is centred on the theme of dots. It's probably my least favourite. It's just the 'pointillize' filter and some kind of layer blending business. It's a picture of a strawberry in my hand from Medley Manor Farm, Oxford.

(I was staying at Walton street at the time and Richard wanted to go fruit-picking, so I cycled over to Binsey and went to the farm by myself and called him from the strawberry fields. It was a glorious day and I came home with a punnet full of strawberries. We made strawberry custard tart and strawberry ice-cream. So you see almost every photograph is a memory).

This is centred around the theme of colour. It is made from a (not very good) sketch I did of Diane Keaton, from an old photograph. In it she was wearing her signature Annie Hall look. I scanned in my pencil sketch, cleaned it up a little bit (but leaving my comments to myself) and then found an oil painting of candied-apples from which I cut out colour & shape for her lips.

So, instead of medieval literature, this is what I'm focusing on at the moment. Learning how to create digital images, but also learning how to draw etc. I will have to post some pictures of my sketches and life-drawings at some point but I am so bad at it I'm embarrassed to show you!

But hopefully I will (eventually) get better.

Autumn in Toronto

I know the season's changed even if no one tells me because the air is chilled though the sun is still toasty. The weather was so beautiful today I walked home from the subway station and then after a short sit-down walked to the grocery store and back.

Earlier today I had my photoshop/illustrator class which I really enjoyed. Our instructor, Karen, is quirky, charming, and totally unpretentious. Plus I get to chat to people on Gmail during class, which is really all that I could have asked for. That and I got to play music for everyone off my ipod... The small pleasure of inflicting my musical tastes on 10 or so other people.

After class today I stayed a bit late in the comlab and scanned a children's story book I bought because I like the illustrations and would like to have a digital copy for reference. Then I left the school and went to the public library. I wanted to get Augustine's Confessions but unsurprisingly the small City Hall branch didn't have a copy of that. So I decided to settle for War and Peace, since the catalogue claimed that there was one copy on the shelf. This copy, however, was not to be found. But when I was browsing I came upon a substantial collection of P.G. Wodehouse - and that's how I went in with the intention of reading Christian spiritual biography and went out with English comedic malarkey. (Actually, I also picked up Richard Yates's A Special Providence, having heard good things about him. I'm about 25 pages into it, and so far so good).

Then I wanted to buy a new set of headphones because mine died a few days ago. My headphones always seem to go on one side, so sound out of one ear but not the other... If I jiggle it around I can manage sound out of both but as soon as I stop toying with it, it goes silent again. I met a guy at my InDesign class who works at Bay Bloor Radio and he said it's a good family owned company, so I decided to go there. The thing is, I thought, ah, Bay and Bloor, piece of cake, I know where that is. Instead I went to Yonge and Bloor and asked for directions and then realized my stupidity. I guess having lived in Toronto for a long time I don't feel at all anxious about where I am going, and end up getting to a general area but with no idea how to get to exactly where I want to go... Like when I went to Hugh's Room last night for a gig, and got out at Dundas West not knowing at all where the venue was at.

Anyhow I got there fine because everyone in the area of Yonge and Bloor seemed to know exactly where Bay Bloor Radio is. I bought a pair of Denon headphones for $33. It's really quite decent - I've been using it on my walks today and the sound is good. I've never heard of the brand before, but I had a chat with the sales-person and he recommended these...

Now I have the rest of Friday all to myself... After feeling like I'm always running around, I look forward to just sitting still and sorting my life out. There's so much admin to be done, and a lot of drawing to catch up with... But I just thought I'd come here and tell you about my mundane quotidian adventures of today. The weather was really very beautiful. I wish you could have been here to share it with me.

p.s. I recommend Bay Bloor Radio. Service was very good and the staff friendly.

Back in Toronto

Today I showed up late for my drawing class because when I got off the train at Queen station I saw these two men playing music. They played beautifully so I gave them some change and stood and listened to a whole song (quite a long, complicated, and varied waltz). I wished there was someone I could dance with just then. I emptied the rest of my change in their money box.

I'm trying to give myself reasons to like living in Toronto again. Moving back is not quite the same as moving to a new place. Expectations of familiarities have not been fulfilled in the way I had expected - though whether that is good or bad is really a matter of perspective.

Luckily it's not hard to find reasons to like Toronto. I picked up some canvas trainers at Kensington Market for a tenner. I see good musicians busking in the subway, like these two gentlemen. I eat marvellously good Chinese food at very reasonable prices...

I try not to think too much about what I have left behind.

No one ever said starting a new life was to be easy!

For the Record

Right now I am not happy where I am, and I think a lot about how things were...

Once Richard baked an absolutely perfect loaf of bread at Walton street. It looked exactly like the picture in the recipe book - and it was his first loaf of bread ever too.

Another time we followed the instructions on the Smitten Kitchen blog and made Blueberry Boy-Bait. But due to an absence of blueberries we used frozen raspberries from the Co-Op instead. It turned out (once more) exactly like the pictures on Smitten Kitchen. Nothing pleases me more than when baked goods turn out as pretty as photographs from the recipe book. Then it transpired that I don't like sponge cake, at all, and so I didn't eat any boy-bait. But Yukie, Robbo and Rich loved it.

Some bait was left out on the counter and Bob saw it in the morning when he came into the kitchen while brushing his teeth. He wanted to eat the bait but half of his mouth was full of frothy toothpaste. So he ate the bait with the other half of his mouth whilst brushing.

Those were happy times. I can't wait to be that happy again.

p.s. Robbo drew a picture of his favourite pudding on the miniature blackboard in the hopes that it would be a pretty enough pictures to entice me to make his favourite pudding. It didn't really work. Robbo Pudding (I think it was spotted dick?) looked a bit like Mount Fuji, but mouldy.

Sinead's Hand

Instant Reactions

I saw some decorative fonts on a site and immediately thought 'textura semi-quadrata.'
Almost brought tears to my eyes (not really).

In Edinburgh? Good, in that case I recommend...

The Interminable Suicide of Gregory Church
by Daniel Kitson.

'Gregory had fifty seven letters to write. He'd never written that many letters, not in one go. In fact, he'd never written a single letter and it was taking significantly longer than he'd anticipated. He'd started, full of optimism, curiously enough, at 9 am and now here he was 8 hours later half way through letter twenty four. He glanced at his watch and then at the noose hanging over his head.

Gregory sighed.

Had he known how long suicide letters take, he thought, he wouldn't have cancelled the milk for the morning.

A story of death postponed by life.'

... I've always liked stories, particularly a certain type of story. Stories like those from my childhood copy of The Complete Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm, or One Thousand and One Nights and the Chinese folk-tales in my 12 volume hardback edition of Chinese folk-tales for children. At some point though these stories gave way to novels (one of the earliest novels I read and loved was Jean-Christophe by Romain Rolland, can you believe it?), but I really never stopped liking stories of the other variety. It's difficult to define just what's so different between a novel and what I consider to be a 'story' and really, the boundaries are ill-defined, but I know a 'story' when I see one.

Daniel Kitson is undoubtedly a fine story-teller and I was mildly surprised when I saw him for the first time recently in Regents Park, performing the first in a series of three Stories for the Starlit Sky. I had been told that he's a stand-up comedian and I expected something of a cross between male-confession, airing of dirty laundry, whacky sound effects that some humans seem to be able to accomplish with the aid of a microphone, maybe political commentary (if I'm lucky) and maybe self-pity or out-right whinging (if I'm unlucky). Instead I was treated to a story about love. Yes, that's right, a love story.

Does that sound horribly naive and/or passe to you? But since when did love go out of fashion? (around the same time that SEX came into fashion? surely not).

The story I heard that night in Regents Park was a story of bittersweet unrequited love - that and many secret passions and acts of love - of the grand variety (Taj Mahal) and of the lesser, more mundane variety (watching a lover as he/she sleeps). Whatever the kind of love or acts of love, however, it was Kitson's ability to bring out the extraordinariness of ordinary lives through his particular brand of enthusiasm, extremely rapid speech, and the combination of resignation, amusement, and exasperation in his narration that made this story stay with me for a long time. Oh, and the fact that it was simply a GOOD story, the kind that makes no beans about being clever or complicated or post-modern or any of that crap but simply stands out for being a well-constructed, neatly-polished, and expertly-delivered story.

So I was particularly interested in seeing him again in the Edinburgh Fringe since I didn't have tickets to the remainder of his three Stories in London. I managed to book four tickets for The Interminable Suicide and I went there with Richard, Iain and Danuta. I'm happy to report that we all walked away chattering happily about how much we had enjoyed the show. So, if you happen to be around right now, go for it, get yourself a ticket.

I hope that some time in the near future Kitson will consider releasing his material in the form of video/audio recording or better yet, as a collection of stories in book format. I know it sounds really 4th grade to say that I learned something from a story but honest to God I feel like I did. It's very rare for me (the big-head pretentious pseudo-intellectual that I am) to go away from a night's entertainment now feeling like I've really gotten something out of it that I can take away with me and keep warm with, but this happened on both occasions when I've seen Kitson. And you know, recently some friends of mine, for various reasons, have been going through difficult times. I often think that hearing these stories would do them good and sometimes I draw a little bit of comparison by telling them a part of the story and it seems to cheer them up. But of course my personal rendition is woefully inadequate and I wish I could buy my friends copies of Kitson stories as Christmas present instead.

Did I mention how much I like stories?