Underneath It All

Gina asked me how many hours of sleep I manage to get, on average.

I know a lot of people who are insomniacs.

Me? I'm the opposite. If anything, I might be a touch narcoleptic. And trust me, I'm grateful. I had this rare bout of insomnia on Saturday, and it was torture, squeezing my eyes shut, willing sleep to come and knowing it wasn't; lifting my head off the pillow practically every hour, to see what time it was; and then yawning like crazy the next day, wanting to sleep but forcing myself to stay awake so I'd be able to sleep later at night.

I figured I'd read.

I have a whole stack of books I haven't gotten around to reading.

I picked up "The Hotel New Hampshire" by John Irving. A few pages in, and it's not too bad. I mean, "A Prayer For Owen Meaney" was bad. Really bad. I liked "The Cider House Rules" and enjoyed "The Fourth Hand", but I didn't particularly like that one about the widow. I never even finished that one.

Finished reading "Freakonomics" the other day and I've already started in on Malcolm Gladwell's "The Tipping Point". It reminds me of "Linked", which was so fucking boring.

I noticed that Gina and I tend to read the same books at the same time. Like, one of us will say, "I'm reading 'The Kite Runner' right now" and the other person will go, "I just read that!" or "I just got a copy of that!"

I've decided, though, that I'm going to lay off on buying any more books 'cause I don't really make it a habit to re-read a lot of things. Besides, I like the library. It's free, first of all. And secondly? It's already been handled by tons of other readers, so I don't feel any sense of guilt if I fold over a page to mark off a place in the book or if I accidentally spill something on it...not that I'd do any of that. I mean, I don't go around defacing public property.

World Press Photo Exhibit

The World Press Photo exhibit rolls out of BCE Place this Sunday, so I decided to check it out yesterday during my lunch break.

Yeah, that photo I've posted sucks and I later noticed this guy in the picture who was staring at me...like taking a picture at BCE Place was weird or something. I like the ceiling, it's kinda cool, I think.

Anyways, a lot of the images were pretty gut-wrenching. If you click on the link, you can actually check out the winners' gallery. But the coolest part of the site is being able to take a look at 50 years worth of winning entries and when you start going through them, you actually recognize a lot of them. They're iconic images and it hits you that over the last 50 years, there's been war, famine, disease, and fucked up weather conditions year after year. Someone, somewhere, is living through hell at this very minute.

All of them had some sort of impact on me, but if you click on the winning image from 1980, that's the one that stuck with me. It's of these two hands --- one of a severely malnourished child and the other of a healthy aid worker. If you read the blurb, you learn that the photographer didn't even want to enter. He was furious because the magazine he shot this image for just sat on it for five months and opted to submit it into this competition, instead. How sick is that?

But then again, it could be said that this image, becoming the winning entry for 1980, is joining a whole list of images that define certain points in our collective history. Does a picture really have the power to change the way we think? It should, but if it did, we wouldn't have to bear witness to heartbreaking, disturbing "winning" images each year in the World Press Photo gallery.

Astonishing Splahes Of Colour

This was taken opposite the Bay. There's this little park there and I always find it kinda neat that there are these little islands of nature interspersed throughout downtown Toronto, amidst the tall glass buildings --- which aren't all that interesting to photograph. Or the ones I took didn't turn out all that great, so maybe that's the problem there.

It's a gorgeous day today, though, and I'm pretty jazzed about taking more pictures later on.

A Couple of Bikes

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Originally uploaded by Anonymous Writer.

I'm not sure why, but I kept noticing all these bikes all around Toronto --- bikes that are probably always there, belonging to people who do their part to save the environment by biking into work.

This was my favourite shot taken that day, even though I suppose the composition could have been a whole lot better. The wheel's partly cut off in the left hand corner at the bottom. But I still like this one a lot.

I've been learning to be a whole lot more selective when it comes to deciding which pics to save and post and which ones to discard.

Jessi sent me a link yesterday for this online photography tutorial, but it seems like it's aimed more at conventional cameras, and not digital cameras.

Ordinary World

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Originally uploaded by Anonymous Writer.

Someone told me I needed a better title for this shot, but the thing is, I got tired --- or too lazy --- of trying to find appropriate or interesting titles.

Shot this in black-and-white because it was a colourless, drab day yesterday and I sort of felt like I was moving through an old black-and-white film.

Someone actually said they'd buy this if it was for sale, but I can't tell if it's just bullshit praise that you throw out, just to be nice. (That's a big problem with me, I think. I can't seem to take praise.)

I actually love this picture, though.

Don't know why. Just do.

I don't know if you can tell, but this is actually a church door. It's one of the side doors in the back for that church that's next to St. Mike's hospital. I was actually standing near it taking a picture of yet another church across the street. But I didn't post that one 'cause it was too touristy. I hate touristy shots, now. I mean, they serve as good reminders of what you saw, but they don't have any artistic merit. They're not pictures you'd look at twice.

Just my opinion, though.

How Soon Is Now?

There's this Sex and the City episode where Carrie's whining about Big and her friends are staring at her with bored, glazed expressions.

"What?" she asks, faltering a little, finally picking up on the dead silence.

They tell her she should go seek professional help, which she quickly dismisses.

Why go to a shrink when she has her friends, she asks?

Samantha gives it to her straight: "Honey, we're just as fucked up as you are. It's like the blind leading the blind."

Sometimes, that's how I feel when my friends and I are trying to dissect a guy's behaviour post-date. It gets to a point where I have to wonder, "What the fuck do we know?" Essentially, don't we just ignore the cold hard facts when we're not all that interested in facing them? Don't we just make excuses when we hope that the glaring signs of rejection and disinterest are wrong? Could it be that we just love living in a state of denial?

The thing is, as soon as we meet someone we're even the least bit interested in, we cling to the hope that maybe this time, it'll work out. Because, let's face facts: nobody really wants to be alone. OK. Maybe some of us do, but 95% of us just want to pair off and procreate and live happily ever after.

So, here's the thing: why is it so hard to shake hope off?

Our rational brain tells us that something is a moot cause, but the old heart keeps pumping away, stubbornly clinging to the remote possibility that reason and logic and cold hard facts are showing us that it's better to shove off and move on.

And why is it that time's about the only thing that can cure us of this misery? Good old time which eventually dulls the hurts and pains and wipes the slate clean for our hearts to be stomped on all over again?

On A Photography Kick

I started over the summer --- taking pictures, that is.

I hated the fact that Sister 2 seemed to have more of an artistic eye than I did. I hated how I didn't seem to see the world the way other people could --- finding interesting angles and colours and things. My view of the world was flat and uninspired.

I guess that's why I thought things might improve if I "practiced".

But it's gotten beyond practicing. I'm now fascinated with photography...because it captures what I can't put into words. A picture just fits into this space so much more adequately as of lately --- I guess it's because I never seem to have anything to say.

My birthday is approaching and I'm looking at it as another year. But as it draws near, all I feel is like I'm in this state of arrested development.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

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Originally uploaded by Anonymous Writer.

The geese are still there.

It must have been hard to get them up there in the first place, so that's where they'll stay.

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Originally uploaded by Anonymous Writer.

This one is my favourite in the series that I took at the Eaton Centre.

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Originally uploaded by Anonymous Writer.

I actually flipped this 'cause it just looked better this way.

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Originally uploaded by Anonymous Writer.

Off-centre. Didn't really like how this turned out, either. I like the colour of the bricks, though.

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Originally uploaded by Anonymous Writer.

I should have centred this better, but then again, I like how it looks like this.

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Originally uploaded by Anonymous Writer.

I'm not religious by any means, but I love the look of old churches like this one.

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Originally uploaded by Anonymous Writer.

An experiment in angles.

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Originally uploaded by Anonymous Writer.

I actually chose the wrong option for this. I wanted to have more of a flowing effect, but what can you do? Better luck next time.

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Originally uploaded by Anonymous Writer.

I didn't really like this picture. It looked too blah to me. But somebody left a comment on it.

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Originally uploaded by Anonymous Writer.

I like these double arches. I saw this woman on the other side of the lawn, just lying there...sleeping! It was so bizzare. She was obviously from one of the office buildings, neatly dressed and everything.

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Originally uploaded by Anonymous Writer.

A shot of the windowed ceiling at the Eaton Centre.

Cool, huh?

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Originally uploaded by Anonymous Writer.

The elevators at the Eaton Centre. I liked all the hardware and how the light from the ceiling bounced off the walls.

It's weird how stuff like this just jumps out you when you've got a camera in your hands. Usually I'd walk right past and not even notice.

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Originally uploaded by Anonymous Writer.

I was focusing more on the Yonge sign, but there's so much going on in this picture that it sort of gets lost.

Indigo

Indigo
Originally uploaded by Anonymous Writer.

I like this shot of the Eaton Centre --- it's actually the side entrance that faces old City Hall, which is actually where the old courtrooms are.

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Originally uploaded by Anonymous Writer.

Lately, I've been turning more to digital photography because it's like I don't really have any words to use anymore.

Well...it's not that. It's just that nothing's been going on. It's a dry patch.

This is a black and white shot of my keyboard at work.

You can't see all the crud stuck between the keys, courtesy of my extreme enjoyment of snacking at my desk.