Extra-special

Pen on paper; inverted

A list of things I've witnessed recently

I don't write enough lists. They make a lot of things simpler - things like recipes, invoices, and yes, even blog posts. Too many of them is probably not that great a thing though. Can you imagine your life being filled with a series of checklists? A list of checklists, turning into a list of lists of checklists ad nauseam. It's actually pretty scary to think about, because if you fill out the lists you eventually turn into a robot. But there's something to be said about having just the right amount of lists in your life, so here's one I want to share.

A list of things I've seen in the past couple weeks or so:

• A car followed by a small truck zooming past me on the segregated streetcar-only tracks on St. Clair. The truck driver quickly realized his mistake and practically jumped off the tracks back onto the road. The car just kept going, at least till the next intersection
• 2 dead rats in the backyard. Suspected killer: Winnie the fat orange cat
• White petals blowing off from the cherry tree and coating the ground
• A badminton birdie twisting on the top of a net and barely making it over to the other side of the court
• Hundreds of little purple flowers dispersed on a hill in High Park
• Two wood ducks, one male and one female, surrounded by four male mallard ducks who were quacking at the lone female in Grenadier Pond
• The Weeknd catch fire on Youtube
• A sketch painting in the subway of a middle-aged Asian woman looking at her phone with headphones on
• A woman in her late twenties nonchalantly twirling her black hair while speaking about her sister-in-law to a male friend on the bus
• A plastic box containing a couple dozen homemade ginger snap cookies
• A full moon partially obscured by clouds in the late night sky

Paraphase over

I think my Paramore phase is finally over. Actually, it's probably been over for a while now, as I haven't been listening to them much. Not at all during the winter (or not much other music for that matter).

The official realization came today while cooking myself breakfast. I had decided to plop in their self-titled CD in the music player and I found myself skipping to the next track halfway through a song. And during some favourites like "Ain't it Fun" and "Part 2" - songs that I was sure I would love forever -, I realized that although the guitar riffs and drum solos were pretty great, the lyrics were making me feel isolated, sad, and even angry at times.

I don't like feeling depressed. Nor do I like feeling angry. And I've written enough about loneliness to know that anything that contributes to that loneliness is not something that I want in my life. So it's time to move on to music that makes me feel happy, and there's plenty of that out there.

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Oh, looks like I'll be going to a Blink-182 concert this summer! Maybe not the happiest music in the world, but I'll be going with good people so that's pretty great.

Kaleidoughscope #1

Bluegreen

I've started to journal again. I find it quite therapeutic. The physical feedback of the pen scratching the paper and the semi-permanent ink on the page is nice. I can't go back and erase complete sentences like I do so often here. I mean, I could, but then I'd start feeling like I'm wasting ink. And I don't like wasting.

I tend to journal in french. I find it difficult to type in french, but writing with a pen on paper is different. I know exactly where to put the accents, and I don't have to fiddle around with keyboard settings to find them.

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The mac I'm using is making weird sounds. It's because it's importing a CD - a drumming CD. At first, it sounded like a bulldozer trying to climb over a giant ant hill; now, it's a more regular sort of scanning sound. Regular and persistent. More like a colony of ants exploring the surface of a bulldozer.

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I had an idea for my blog yesterday.

So I've stuck with this whole kaleidoughscope theme for years now, and up until yesterday I had never really tried to draw one. But then I found my old set of colour pencils from art class and decided to fill in a circle with different colours. And I thought "okay, great, I can finish this kaleidoughscope and then scan it and upload it to my blog".

But then I got fed up that I was drawing my kaleidoughscope in my writing journal and stopped.

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I've been pretty good about treating this nature deficit disorder for the past few days. Stopping and noticing greenery in the city whenever possible. Spending time in the sun, or doing breathwork after the rain, when negative ions are aplenty.

Natural deficit

Nature Deficit Disorder. Now that's a label I can get behind. I'm inspired by it. It's a label unlike any other that does not seek to put a fault on the human being or one's brain chemistry.

It's been a rough few months. I think I underestimated the winter season. I was looking forward to snow and the calmness that it usually brings and instead got swept up by fire and chaos.

I hope to revisit this theme of lack of nature or, more positively, the efforts that I make to include more nature in my life.