January 2005 Archives

The more you see the less you know. The less you find out as you go. I knew much more then than I do now.
-- "City of Blinding Lights" U2

Got a dull ache head to go with the jittery strong coffee thrills. The landscape, outside, is still. High blue above, brillant white receding below. Air that could cut if it moved.

I'm soundtracking my day and drinking cold water. Have to clean...and get that way. The hours feel unknowable to me. At the moment.

So I'm trying to build momentum.

Out of shadows and reflections.

I like this, very much:

The balance between dark and light, the cold but dreamy feel, the reflected illumination cast upwards on her face...and the contemplative pose. I'd pat myself on the back -- but I just took the picture. The artist, Winter, and daylight made the image. Along with time.

I'm happy that I got it.

I was reading about a watch, today. One thing that it does (out of many features) is visually show you how much daylight remains in the day. It also tells you when the sun will rise. And the moon. The watch has one analog hour hand, no minute or second hands (a digital display covers that). I like that very much, as well.

Time gets wasted, but not in its amount. I think we waste time's nuances. We color it like a kid with a crayon drawing snow: grab the white and go. But snow isn't just white, like time isn't just seconds.

I think that there is a much more subtle lushness to time. I like how it ties-in with movement and thought...memory and sensation. It has flavor and feel. A balance we only let ourselves see a little frozen moment of.

"When the soul wants...the soul waits..."

I really like this. So dreamy and desolate.

The shadows cast by the setting sun are like trails of watercolor ink: icy blue over white. In a landscape made vivid and smooth by sharp light and snow, everything holds still. They say Winter will shake and fall heavier tomorrow. In this moment, though, the skies are perfect blue and clear. Deep, till the top of the settling day.

It is pretty.

But the air is as sharp as glass. It pulls vapour from your breath and sets your flesh to shivering in seconds.

Still, it's Friday -- and the tower of moments ahead feel cleaner, more free because of that.

Cool.

Zoomed-in during the blue morning to an electric candle lightbulb and snapped details. Snow falling like pale weightless sand. Feeling the raspy bite of the shovel, tossing the white around, earlier. Soon again, for it keeps fluttering down. Fading to ghosts the dark of cleaned walks and driveways. Coffee burnt my tongue tip. My fingers are cold. The air is snowglobing outside...then clearing. Then again. I feel kind of "drifty" too. Not part of the day. Unconnected. I don't know why.

In the night, under a sky that holds the moon in icy milk, the air burned my lungs. Taking out the trash with Pal with me, loyally. Before: red wine with a velvety name. And a novel, none too bad -- though with it's author's colors showing a bit too obviously. Now this in the quiet and slight buzz. Updating and installing "nofollow". Feeling sad and slow inside -- yet open to the night. And to possibilities. Freedom in the expansion of thought. Dreams, impending. This next dawn... Perhaps it will be better.

I dreamt of Godzilla last night. It has been ages

Surreal-sized beasts tossing massive vehicles down from the sky like toys. Monsters, towering above the landscape. Racing along beside them, getting too close. It was the first time, in a long time, I'd had a nocturnal adventure like that.

I wasn't scared. I never have been by those dreams.

I wonder at the rareness of that imagery in my sleeping mind, now.

Thinking about it makes me feel tired. And a little wistful.

Sometimes, I don't understand anything.

I once read a novel where the main character had had his eyes (and brain) wired so that he only saw the world in noir-ish black and white.

I can see the theatrical allure in that.

Black and white has a sort of dream-like clarity (and otherworldliness) to it. It seems oddly perfected, in a reductionist way. I have been taking a fair amount of black and white photos with my new camera. Playing (and enjoying the results).

But...still.

I do feel myself yearning for some color. Maybe it is the grayness of these days.

I was looking at the photos that I have associated with The Allurium's "Winter Theme" and wishing that they featured a bit more range.

I love the noir groove.

But I want to go multi-chromatic.

Oh yeah.

Early, last year, I had a dream in which I sank into a wide river (or lake) of vivid green water. That dream has lingered in my memory; this photo reminds me of it.

These days are dreams, or ghosts. Pale gray and timeless, haunted by the steady fall of water from an indistinct sky. I am suspended in the hours. The urge to sleep rises and recedes like an oneiric tide. The urge to move -- well, that has faded to translucency.

These days hover. Not so much progressing, as slowly fading. They fade-to-white in the morning and fade-to-black at night. In-between, they...endure.

Or we endure them.

I do find a sort of dreamy grace to days like these. A Gothic tinge. They really aren't all that bad.

Except for the halo of emptiness that surrounds them.

And the saturation of gray.

So I was thinking of that black and white thing... This doesn't quite fit the groove I was in, but:

The glow from my screen is pale, blearing outwards. Hall light is washing in from the left -- window black on my right. Kind of a contrast.

Like this.

I'm hungry. I have U2's "Love and Peace or Else" playing on my stereo. I am lightly biting the inside of my lower lip.

It is seven.

So it's Monday and I am in a quiet moment, here.

Waking after eleven hours of solid sleep and an enjoyable dream of friends and family, my happy meter was up...then wavered into gloom, but is now drifting (I'm trying to push it back into "happy"; we'll see how it goes). Sometimes that kind of thing is a lot of work...

The coffee is not bad, though, and I'm thinking of subjects for striking black and white photography. I'm also doing laundry, updating calendars, checking my bank account, and pondering dreams both small and large.

Hmm. Monday.

Quiet, in the New Year's first month.

All water from the dust gray skies, today...and tonight. Endless trickles, encroaching chill. An unfocused cast to the air -- that goes invisible as the light slips down behind the horizon. There, but not there. Now.

On a morning, recent, I watched Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence. Now I am pondering art, beauty, and the things that are there but not there.

The movie, by-the-way, is amazing. I highly recommend it.

Some oddness, at the front edge of 2005...