Spring-a-ling-ling

It only takes a couple of glorious, sunny, warm days, with temperatures seeping into the 20 Centigrade range for Toronto to transform itself from the salt encrusted, frozen monolith in is for 3 months of the year into a living, breathing creature resplendent in flapping, fuchsia skirts, wayfarer sunglasses and hair-ad gleaming smiles. As butterflies emerge from dormancy, so Toronto shakes itself free of dark, woolen coats and sullen hearts, to free creatures perfumed with sensuality and sustained with patio lounging; to stretch wings of gauzy cottons and translucent silks. God bless you, Toronto, you creature of so many faces. I'm glad to know you through it all.

Snowshine

Summertime and the living is easy

I sit for as long as I can at the water, when I have the time, watching the ducks and geese drift in slow, rhythmic ribbons across the lake. Where do they go when it gets cold? Could I go with them? Wouldn't it be good to stretch your wings and feel the air beneath them lift you up and carry you away? It's been a long time since I felt any urge to write anything and I still feel the lack of words. The ink in my fingers has been dry for months. The Summer finally did arrive. As it always does, somehow. I've traveled a bit, here and there, and enjoyed watching the view from my 10th story window change from one filled with browns and greys to a flourish of bright, verdant green and warmer tones of the summer foliage and flora. On the street the human flora started appearing after a long Winter in black coats and thick woolen tights. The Edie Sedgewick like revival in the Prada Sring 07 line brought out every bit of leg allowed within modern decency levels, and some above and beyond. I am enjoying the freedom the Summer offers to be outside, active and feeling the blood pumping in my veins again. I'm working on new work. I'm loving my life, despite the lack of literary accompaniment. I started a new little project outside of work exploring the loves and lavishes of food. Perhaps one day I'll share. Perhaps not.

Contemplating Dead Sparrows

So, when people ask how we've found the winter here, my usual, and honest, response is, 'not that bad, really.' In fact, we kinda enjoyed the Winter in that special foreigner's cocktail of never-seen-the-white-stuff way, with a twist of hehe-can-you-believe-the-temperature-they'll- never-believe-us-back-home-hehe, a little sprinkling of look-I-can-fall-flat-faced-into-this- snow-bank-and-not-even-get-bruised and maybe just a wee, tiny, insignificant dash of Mmmmm-beer. We were advised by many and warned by more to book a sunshine getaway in March, a fortification of the soul and a sun tanning of the nerves, a necessary thing for all Canadians not interested in the Japanese Romance of suicide or the infernal madness of Cabin Fever. But we relished in the foreignness of our first Winter. We absorbed the romance of snowflakes on eyelashes and hot chocolate (with the little marshmallows on top) after a morning of ice-skating. We spent hours wondering the Winter landscapes of High Park and enjoying the freedom of Children in this country, tobogganing and bouncing unhindered through the powder.
Until yesterday. Until a tease of Spring, like breaking through the surface after a dive into a freezing pond to the warm sun on your face, brought on a buying of Tulips (see previous post) and a cleaning up and packing away of furry Boots; only to be dunked under in the season-pool by that bully, Winter. Suddenly the face burn was no longer fun. Suddenly facing a half hour walk home in the -14C wind-chill felt like a sentencing.
Oh, come on already. Are you kidding me? It's April. For the love of all things budding, bring back the Spring.

Good Cheer

I've been waiting since mid-January to buy my first bunch of Tulips. The flower shops bring them out almost before Christmas these days but I still cling rather fiercely to the teachings I received from Marcus Crane and Green Florist, where I spent an idyllic 8 months working as a commercial florist. Tulips are a spring flower. Like renunculars, daffs and hyacinths, tulips are the fairy dust to break the spell of Winter, and having them in the house will induce a certain state of hypnotic cheer. Buying tulips before one's soul has fully digested, absorbed and despaired of Winter is sure to cause major cataclysmic upheaval in the Universe at large and generally mess with your head.

So I tenaciously wait it out, breezing nonchalantly past buckets of the tight, green buds on the Wintry sidewalks, begging to be taken home. I don't even notice their fresh, come hither eyes on me as I dash past the displays at the front of the Kitchen Table as I run in for milk and bread. Until April. Until now, when they sit, three bunches of happiness, on my counter, loving me with every opening petal.

Lazy like Sunday Morning

With Billie Holiday crooning her heartache over the sound system, a flat, soft grey sky keeping the world closeted in a feeling of slow motion and timelessness, what better way to pass the day than a long, aimless walk in a soggy, almost-spring park and tea with a good friend. Let the world just disappear, let nothing matter more than the choice between lemon poppy seed and chocolate brownie and forget the existence of anything but what the eye can see from the chaise longe.

Seeking

It's been a while since I woke up on a Monday morning stiff and spongy-headed from a week of hard work, and I take a mildly sadistic pleasure in the ache in my back and the cramp in my mouse-hand, knowing where it comes from. Like a good meal after a day of fasting, like the morning after a night with a lover you've not seen in a while, I feel smug and satisfied and slightly lazy. I was invited to submit a photo essay for the Loerie Awards mag in South Africa under the theme 'seeking' and I think I made the extended deadline with an hour to spare and a photoshop induced headache to put me to bed.

Outside it's snowing again. We're waiting for the spring.

32 words for snow

We're in the midst of a howling snow and freezing rain storm in downtown Toronto. Tomorrow has already been declared, by those eager for a late snuggle in bed, a Snow Day. My tenth story window has been frozen shut since eleven this morning and the intermittent splattering of the ice pellets against the panes keeps reminding me of the surge of meteorological activity on the other side of the glass while I sit as snug as ever behind my double glazing and insulation. I'm left to my own devices for a few days while the man makes pretty pictures in Miami and works on his perm and I'm finding the added quiet somewhat bewildering. I'm overcompensating with season three of Battlestar Galactica, a show that gives my normally cynical outlook on the future of humanity a little flicker of hope, and spinach and ricotta cannelloni: home made.

Fear Not the Puddles

I still revel in the fact that I'm free to walk unmolested through a beautiful urban environment and I don't mind taking a few hours now and then to do just that. It might be a slow way of getting around, but it encourages looking up and looking backwards and looking around and a pair of kick-ass winter boots mean I'm not restricted to the path of the Snow Plough. Happy Hunting.

Mies 'n me

Red Yellow

We're having an on again off again relationship with Winter in that Burton/Taylor kind of way. It didn't snow over Christmas, which would have been devestating had it not been for a Few Good Nogs and some plummy pudding. I've spent two days working on some new stuff that's been in my head for a while. It's good getting those images out to make room for yet more new stuff that will (hopefully) come. It amazes me how quickly the 'new' ideas start resembling lonely socks looking for partners in the laundry basket of my mind if I don't get them out fast enough. So, I forced myself to finish a piece that really felt as if it had lost all hope of ever finding it's right foot mate, just to tie up a loose end, and I have to admit, despite my lack of initial enthusiasm, it looks okay. Then I finally moved onto something new, which I'll be working on over the next bit and, Damn Jezebel, it felt good doing something fresh. Watch this space.

Update

So, thanks to some super speedy technical help from the-man-with-the-hair, I've updated my website, added some new stuff, changed some old stuff and done a general shuffle. I periodically used to spend a night doing the same to the few bits of furniture in my bedroom when I was a child. Change is as good as a holiday, they say.

Victor and Ralph

Orange Yellow Blue

Mustard and Cobalt

Dark Red with Blue

Toronto the Grey

Sometimes one has nothing of value to say.

Seaside nostalgia

My folks are at the beach right now. Swimming, walking on the beach, finding shells in rock pools left from last nights' high-tide and eating skottel breakfasts of toast and eggs and bacon and tomato's and big brown mushrooms and kippers and orange juice and coffee and jam. They're having tedious layers of Johannesburg and London scrubbed off them by the wind and the salt and the sand. Sigh. How I miss my Traffies.

A walk in the Park

It's autumn in Toronto. The trees outside have turned to a sea of gold and umber and vermillion. The temperatures are dropping steadily and we're getting our first taste of what the winter will hold. The parks are filled with amateur photographers taking advantage of the can't-go-wrong scenery and bridal parties grinning through the freeze of off the shoulder gowns in the quest of beautiful memories for years to come. It's a time for flushed cheeks, woolen hats and home made soup and the air is full of promise and the sharing of body heat.

A view of my demise

So, after a few months spent nestled gently in layers of tissue paper, having travelled far and wide to foreign climes, my backup drives are up and running again and I've been going through the slow process of search and elimination of all the junk that tends to collect over a year of job backups. And I found this, a long forgotten image that still, nearly three years later, manages to raise my heart beat and dampen my palms. I like a cliff, I like a view. I like getting up high and feeling an unobstructed breeze on my face. But this particular spot, overlooking the Karoo in the Eastern Cape, nearly caused me a far more adventurous ending than I would, in truth, choose for myself. Though, if I can't choose to die peacefully in my sleep at a grand age at exactly the same time my partner dies, I guess you could end it in worse looking places. Be that as it may, this picture reminds me of how on the knife-edge life is and how one should always look before one leaps with one's new Hasselblad.

It's Jacaranda time somewhere

Drafter

Alexa and the Stallions

Memories of High Summer

Bang for your buck

Plane ticket to France: $1200.00
Hotel and meals in France: $2500.00
10 rolls ASA 400 B&W film: $110.00

Spending 3 weeks trying to find someone competent enough to scan your film: priceless?

Bang for your buck

Plane ticket to France: $1200.00
Hotel and meals in France: $2500.00
10 rolls ASA 400 B&W film: $110.00

Spending 3 weeks trying to find someone competent enough to scan your film: priceless?

Gettin' it right. Slowly

Yes, you have seen this pic before. Or rather, you have seen a digital snap of the same thing done here, in 400ASA B&W. Look closely. See that funny fuzzy stuff? That's grain. From film. How we miss it.

It can be very frustrating at times, from a professional point of view, moving to a new country. Well that goes with out saying. All those years of painstaking relationships built with the people behind your product, the people who you rely on to get your film out in time, to get your scans/printing/lunch run, cast away over a 24 hr transit time. Never take your trolls and gnomes for granted. A working relationship with the techie team can save your life and your job. Getting people you've never met before to understand that you are (a) a professional and (b) likely to bring in a fair amount of future work and (c) grumpy about tech stuff everyone assumes you don't understand (and, well, probably don't) is no easy task. Especially when you're not wearing one of those uber cool Photographer-man vests with all those handy pockets on them and bad hiking boots with your uber cool tapered jeans tucked into them.

Sometimes I wonder if I'd be taken a little bit more seriously if I bought one of those vests. Or perhaps an attachable penis would do the trick.

Troglodite scanner man

How I miss having access to a decent scanner. This is the garbage I was given by a so called professional company. Do they think I am oblivious to a sharpening filter? Did they think I wouldn't notice? Perhaps they just don't see the photogrpher behind the blonde hair. Best the go a-fixing before I go a-name-calling.

Tourists all look the same

I finally got J Cash's Folsom Prison disc. It's good on the nerves. Yippy-ka-yay.

Musee d'Ohmygod

The Musee d'Orsay, for those who don't know, is built inside a 19th Century train station. The list of art in it's collection reads like the announcers list at the Academy Awards. True A-list stuff, a reminder to us all that we need to work harder. My travel buddy and I spent the better part of a day in there and I still ran out of time. Which means I get to go back. In winter. Early in the day. And I'm starting with the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists this time. The list-tickers hog the space later in the day, ignoring the masters like Millet and Delacroix down stairs.

Madame de Inspiration

The Centre de Pompidou feels, on the inside, like a place of learning. A modern day shrine to the future of art based on the lessons of our fathers. It was an honour and a highlight of my little life to have visited, and it'll be even better when they're done with the renovations. Go if you want to take notes on how it's done. Go if you want to come out inspired with the possibilities. Designed by Renzo Piano, Gianfranco Franchiniand and Richard Rogers, we somehow seem only to remember Mr Rogers in the, 'oh, I've been there' kind of way. It was pretty in the pictures. It's awesome in the flesh.

Petanque, anyone?

With an estimated population of 9.9 million, Paris is still closed for the most part on Sundays, and smaller boutiques close for lunch the rest of the week. The French, it seems, far from being the arrogant, rude, garlic-munching Gauls we've been media-drummed into believing they are, know the value of taking the time to read the paper under a tree in the park, of waiting until the pears are just the right shade of ripe before whipping up a batch of sorbet and of taking a full lunch hour over a few games of Boules with a bottle of bubbly to wash down this week's victories. Viva la France. If only we would learn the lesson already.

Bursting with Paris

I need a couple days for this blasted jet lag to disipate. But France is bigger than I thought. Big enough for the both of us.

Bruised Ego Smoothie