SIR

For the sake of this conversation, we will call the subject " Sir".
This is what our waitress called him first and foremost, before her language and his temperment degraded.

***
I still cannot get over the weather in Toronto. Here I am, sitting on a patio, enjoying a summer breeze. I, in no way, feel cold. I am staring at my drink and contemplating the words that myself and my friend are exchanging. We have been discussing relationships, perceptions and the internal warfare which comes with love. My friend brings up a good point. She asks  why gays have to announce their sexuality, when heteros never do. We discuss society and the rules and the bisexual properties of love that everyone should really just accept.

The bubbles continue to dance to the surface of my beer, mimicking our discussion in their energy and more so in their ephemeral qualities of our ideas. I love these talks, I love that i can have them and that I have friends who like to think.

It is Sir who breaks our conversation. His bike hits the patio fence behind my friend. He nearly does the same, but manages to swing around land in the unoccupied wheel of our table.His eyes are darting and he announces " is this seat taken ladies?". His bald head is glistening in the evening light, he is breathing heavily forcing his T-shirt to fight for coverage of his gut.

Before we can answer his non- question he adjusts himself in the seat and continues " good, because I have some things to tell you about life.... I am still trying to figure it out. I am 51 and I am still trying to figure this shit out. You should get that in your heads". His voice quivers, and his lecture is over toned by the anxiety of a ticking clock.  I try to keep his eyes, I try to sympathize, but it just makes him more frantic. I feel strange, because that is how i feel too.

I start to imagine if this could be me. What if I don't figure out my next move... what happens to the people who are not successful... how does that happen in the first place?

He gets frustrated and tells me I cannot understand. He coils back into his alien shell and raises his voice.

Our server, previously uninterested in our section, comes over and confronts the man, telling him that us girls were having a good talk together, and if he could kindly evaporate then he should ( paraphrased).

He explodes, stopping all conversations in a 10 person radius. Claiming he was telling us things we needed to hear, telling her that life will pass her by. "Bitch!" he yells at her.... " aw.. .so pretty with your dreads and your eyes.... BITCH!". The man has now made, what modern society would call a "scene".

Chivalrous men from tables around start to make fun of the man, calling him stupid and an asshole. Telling him to get a life, telling him he should leave. Now hes the victim. All of a sudden the man seems so much smaller. He seems like the unlucky one in a game of monkey in the middle. His words mean nothing and he cannot hold on to us.

He stumbles to the street, yelling at the laughing crowd, yelling at lack of respect.  He turns back to myself and my friend, who have been silent since the beginning. " Weren't we having a nice conversation ladies??" his eyebrows rise  high enough to put some coverage on his scalp.

We cannot answer now. I smile sympathetically and nod.

Part of me wishes he could have stayed, that I could have been the one to listen to him. IT would have taken a while, but maybe if someone has the right kind of unexpected patience, he might be able to sort it all out.

No photos, not even a story. but this is the man of the week.

Scribble,

Its all in my head, ive been writing everyday though.

Its been a running monologue that never makes it to paper, but I swear its gold.

Gimme time.

Ill make sense of it all :)

Personal Challenge

Personal challenges are important. They help you to grow, and if set right, they can change your perspective on the world around you. I intend to change my perspective, or at least enhance it.

When I was younger and more scholarly, I would ride the subway home from high school everyday. The 3 stops between Sheppard and Eglinton station would span about 15 minutes during rush hour traffic. They were often my favorite part of the day. Besides the obvious thrill of being a visible minority in language and skin color, I was always awe struck by the faces and mannerisms of the people around me. Old, Young, smelly or dressed to the nines, these people were diverse and lived lives I could not even begin to conceive.

There is something about the unknown that is thrilling, especially when analyzing people. I can never help myself from trying to imagine the lives of the people we spend so little of our time with, yet see so often.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/eyesee/4070429341/lightbox/

So here it goes,

I have a plan.

This summer I am hoping to publish a biography once a week.
I will aim to publish someone I do not know very well or someone I have met within the month.

I will take photos, I will spend time with them finding out about what they do, where they live, what they want out of life. And I will publish it here, in my little corner of the interweb.


I challenge you to do the same.

moderna

As I watched Vancouver erupt, i couldn't help but feel grateful that my birthday landed on Game one, not game seven.

I had been wandering the streets with friends after that first win, trying to find a bar which wasn't empty ( TV-less) and wasn't jammed. I remember being surprised by the number and energy of the crowd, and although it was a positive, spunky group of people ... I remember being extremely uneasy.

It doesn't take much to turn a crowd. It doesn't take but one person to have the power of many. Mob mentality is something that can be studied in schools, it can be a specialty, you can spend your whole life trying to understand why, when everyone knows that something is wrong, it takes so much strength to stand against it. Why did the Nazis exist? how could there be more than just a few evil people?

How did the G20 end up so god damn messed up, with cops detaining innocent people.
How can you possibly explain how a hockey game, or a soccer game or a baseball game could warrant the destruction of the town in which it is being played?

I mean common, not only did Vancouver now have to deal with loosing a pathetic series, but they also had to replace cars, clean up shops and answer to a world of disappointment.


Lets bust their asses on Facebook.


yea.This man saw the sounds.

down to earth.

Dreams have been weave-y lately.

I don't know the last time I has such vivid adventures in my own head but lately it has been getting out of control. It began a few days ago, I was jolted awake almost hourly by unconscious tripping and falling from heights. Being a climber, this concerns me as to how my unconscious mind is absorbing my conscious pursuits.

It will be sudden, and I often wont remember the dream that proceeds the fall, but without warning I will be sitting up in my bed with a bad case of vertigo.

Zooming out, I am in my parents house, in Toronto, fields of concrete and flat land surrounding me.


I suppose that is why I climb, to control that fear of falling. There has often been the debate of whether climbers and other extreme sports addicts are fearless, or just as fearful as anyone else. The difference in my mind is that we are trying to control our fears. Harness them and develop techniques for keeping our minds cool under pressure.

I remember reading an article in the globe last year, it was about a woman who was born without fear. She was 44 years old and never had that instinctual sense not to get in a fight and not to jump off a cliff. When first reading, I could only assume this woman would be a classically fantastic climber.
But wait? Why would she even want to climb?

Such an integral battle for every athlete is their dialogue with fear. Without that, she would not last long, nor would she get the blood rushing feeling of success when topping out, hitting the anchors or standing in the wind above a mammoth cliff edge.

Maybe fear is a good thing.

Only when it allows for a full night's sleep though.

Traders.

Toronto has always been an adventure.

On the subway, I was barely surprised to see a man in an encrusted beret and full length fur coat strolling aboard. Although it was a cold winter day, seeing that much animal hanging from his shoulders gave him an excessive weight in his step. He eyed his fellow passengers carefully and finally chose his seat in the corner of the train. The woman next to him, sporting a fur-lined coat herself, complimented his style. This spurred on a conversation about how warm animals can be.

I drifted out for a second back into my ipod, shuffling songs, but quickly decided that eavesdropping is much more entertaining. When I tuned back in, they were justifying to each other their “cause”cold weather and… hyenas?

The man was explaining to the woman how the animal kingdom is so much crueler than the fur industry. He exclaimed his shock “ I was watching a show one… and this hyena was chasing a gazelle and bit its leg clean off!!”. the woman gasped. “ no…that is so inhumane!”  she said in disbelief. The man entertained her earnestly. “ Well that’s the animal kingdom for you hunny… savage…”.

Love my Chaos.

Ok, so I made it.

Through the hurdles of goodbyes, hellos, and hangovers, over the boarding passes, sky trains and customs, and now I am sitting in Gate A2 in the YVR airport, sights set for Ontario.


I got on the bus, bags and all and the bus driver asked, in his friendly vancouver- transit way, where I was headed. "home or away...? " he asked.

" I dont really know..." I answered, smiling.

I feel like I am home, but I suppose that is where I am going.


"well do me a favor"  the bus driver said, eyes on the road but voice trailing behind him.

" Make sure you dont tell all your Toronto friends how much fun you had."