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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 2361
It's been 2 weeks without a car.
Normally it wouldn't matter, I've lived so long without a car what do I need one now for? But this new place, it's far from everywhere, a ten minute walk to a erratic bus stop, a half hour wait (if you're lucky) for the bus, connections, I'm out there.
The only amenities in this neighborhood are a Gas Station and a Pub.
And the weather, the first week I took the bus, this week I've been in, it's close to 20 below, colder in the evenings, thick snow everywhere; bored cats pacing the house and fighting over trifles, we've all got Cabin Fever.
I check what I could be doing, if the car was ready (it's not, I called and checked...). There's the Spanish Film Festival at The Plaza. Damn. It looks good, and not just because I can't go... Then there's The Marda Loop Justice Film Festival, which is good to take the boy to. But there's no way I'm going to that without a car. And there's always Chess at the Pumphouse Theatre, never great productions (your lucky if anyone can sing), but they're fun and they're cheap.
But it's 20 below and I'm not going anywhere.
There's a great Puppet Show - The Narrative of Victor Karloch, fortunately not yet in Calgary, so I'm not yet missing anything there, but watching the trailer I want to be there NOW!.
So I clean. How bored do I have to be before I clean? Pretty damned bored. I make the bed and vacuum, I clean the toothpaste off the bathroom wall (and in the process discover a mirror), I postpone finishing my book (The History of Love by Nicole Krauss, loved it...), I promise myself I'll go out, somehow, tonight, I make cucumber and tomato and tomatillo salsa, and I make my vague plans.
There are paintings to be worked on, but tonight I'll skip it. I'm going out.
The local pub, The Swig and Swine it's called, a ten minute walk, they advertise bikini waitresses and VLT's and "Porkin' in the Rear...", and I think that I should probably clean myself up before I go out, then I realize where I'm going (and why would anyone clean themselves up to go there, I ask you?) and I despair and finish reading my book.
Another quiet night in. I'll go out tomorrow night, I promise....
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 2415
The Boy wanted a snack to take to his drama class, and being near the Chinese market on center street provided endless inspiration.
"Let's just go to Safeway or 7-11" he said, but I assured him that we'd find loads for him to snack on at the Chinese Market.
We started in the bakery, the bean-paste buns or the elaborate hot-dog pretzels. Nothing more suspicious than a Chinese hot-dog. He won't be persuaded.
So we go the the market, root through the aisles, they have dried cuttlefish, chilies, and hundreds of products that looks somewhat western, until you read the ingredients. We finally settle on a couple of things of Pocky, a mango juice and a bag of Octopus flavored crisps. He's not into the crisps, not really, not at all, but I tell him he'll look very cosmopolitan in Drama class ("who else will have brought Octopus flavored crisps for lunch, I ask you? Tell me one!...") and he doesn't have to eat any of them, he can just offer them around in trade for scraps of other peoples lunches and he gets all resigned and buys them finally to placate me.
Moments like this I tell myself, there is no better father in the world.
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 2239
"I don't need a grid" I say to myself, "I'll just paint it freehand, like Leonardo Da Vinci or Van Gogh or Picasso..." .
I mean, really, why would I need a grid? How tough can it be?
4 hours into it and I'm looking to MOBA for inspiration, or at least some reassurance, there's none.
It's a tricky thing, this capturing a resemblance. I look at the reference photo. Back to my painting. In pose they're somewhat the same. I'm painting a child, 2 years old. And she has an ear (visible), a nose, 2 eyes, a mouth, all the things that my painting has. But my painting isn't her. Not by a long shot. Not even slightly, not even in the dark. And I try and discover what's gone so terribly wrong.
All the major visible organs. Check. Position. Check. Colors? I'll worry about those later.
There was a moment when I was painting her when she looked exactly like her mother. Well, not exactly, but I could see her. From there she became uglier and uglier, until now, when she resembles no one so much as Doug McKenzie (on the right) or an acid-induced Michael Jackson.
So it's back upstairs, into the photoshop to create the grid, copy it to some graph paper (and verify there's a resemblance...) then go downstairs and see where things went sideways.
"I just need practice" I reassure myself, although there's no reassurance standing in front of this monster I've created...
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 1996
So there will be no work until they're done.
They're not very vocal, just the "thump thump thump" of their headboard against the wall. They should move the bed.
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 2078
Still spacey, but I've stopped noticing it.
Now it's the taste of things - or lack of taste. Coffee is bitter. Juice, sweet treacle of sugar, barely registers on the palate, I know it's cold, I know the brand, know that I should be grossed out by the sweetness of it, but I can't taste it.
Salty and savory, on the other hand, taste fine. Taste like more in fact.
And the cigarettes, sometimes I don't even know that I'm smoking them. But I notice the little anxieties, the moments of inexplicable panic when I don't know what's wrong (something's wrong...I just can't put my finger on it...), quitting smoking without cigarettes it was easy to ascribe a cause, now that I still can smoke it's harder - there's no reason for these attacks, but they pass and I get back to what I was doing.
Whatever it was I was doing.
What was I doing again?
I need a list. I have a list, it's upstairs, I'll just go upstairs and get it. In a minute. I should pet the cat. Where was I?
I'm almost out of cigarettes. Tomorrow's quit day. Friends tell me to wait, no need for the quit day, I'll stop without it, I'm not sure, don't want the anxiety of being lost in the suburbs with a craving for a smoke, but I'm trying to quit (when I remember..). And so maybe I'll just try and forget that I'm out, it seems to be easy enough, I'm forgetting everything else...