Sunday, November 26, 2006

Future/Past




"Motorcycle Diaries" just came to a close here in my living room. Trying to feel a connection with Dave who is in Caracas and a day from returning home. The film was wonderful because it offered me a warm invitation to participate in Ernesto "Che" Guevera and Alberto Granado's epic journey. It will be memorable because of its grand and sweeping landcapes. As I sit here, I am thinking about history and how it is recorded and who gets a say, and when and why and what. And I'm thinking about perspectives and points of view and how easy it is to feel competitive against our fellow humans when intellectually, it should be possible to shed the ego and share in our experiences together. Will we ever be able to write a "human" history?



Above is a picture of what will soon be the tallest building in the world. Tokyo will beat Toronto! Acutally, the CN Tower which I see from my living room widow, from the building where I work, the building that oddly is such a presence in my life - well, I forget that it's the tallest building.


That reminds me of when I arrived in Vancouver at age 20. When I expressed my awe of the mountains, a friend who had moved there a year prior claimed "Ah, you'll forget they're even there. I do."


In nine years, I never did.





Not sure what radio station this is I am listening to, but the DJ is talking about Oregon - feels like a different lifetime ago that I passed though that state! Anyways, they are playing a Broken Social Scene tune. I remember the first time I listened to it - in the kitchen at the place on Bleecker. I think back to what my life was then. I also remember clearly listening to this particular song in my basement apartment on Gwynne last year. And now I am here. Is life changing too fast? Too slow? Too much? Too little? Again, I wish I were somewhere foreign. I am looking forward to the stories and images Dave brings back from Venezuela tomorrow.




Tuesday, November 14, 2006

Making Sedentary Progress

It has been too many months since my last confession, Father.

Perhaps it is the grinding discomfort I feel whenever I visit my untouched blog that I have moved very little since I last wrote and this is meant to be a place of movement - the movement of people and ideas. But maybe I can accept into the fold the concepts of flux, evolution and dynamism. What little movement I have made is - physically - virtually immeasurable. My job has changed: I now work at the CBC Broadcast Centre downtown instead of in the barren outlands of North York. So that has made a major impact on my daily commute and in turn my daily life. Taking the bicycle or a short streetcar ride - or heck, walking even! - the change from transitting from streetcar to subway to bus which robbed almost two hours of my day has impacted my life considerably. For one thing, I've been left with all this time! What a luxury. Yet I have been confounded by how to manage it.


May we exchange wisdom with each other as we travel on our own unique, mind-blowing experiences!