love is...

...never wanting to say.... "get off my pillow!"

it's sunday at 6am and i am freezing... my heart feels funny in the sense that it's beating, not fast, but not slow.. just beating, reminding me it's there... reminding me that we will be working as a team today.. 6:15... my stomach begins to turn... i quickly boil the water and burn my tongue on the not yet cooled oatmeal... i look as the dehydrated cranberries beginning to puff up and regain shape and wonder whether it was the best idea to add those in this morning... in my head i hear john stanton saying "don't do anything different on race day".. sorry john but i just couldn't handle another bland breakfast!! i sprinkle on a little more brown sugar and my heart begins to beat at an irregular pace... first fast, then slow, slow, slow as i remind myself that i've done this before...

6:30 as i creep out the door into the freezing cold darkness... all i see are headlights and the promise of a warm car... bustling in my black, shiny garbage bag with the hole cut out for my head, i shock my legs to life by sprinting to the open, welcoming door... sweet relief... we're on our way..

now it's 6:59 and in my head i silently count down the seconds until starbucks will finally unlatch their doors and allow in the mob of anxious, excited runners queing in for the bathroom... it's 8 degrees celsius and i'm wearing less than 40 inches of fabric under an old garbage bag... i am ready to get this over with...

7:15 and we're walking our way through the corrals... there is excitement in the air and it's contagious... out of the corner of my eye, i spot a green t-shirt and like a flash..  i remember why i'm here... i see her there, with her arms raised and her smile huge... i feel my hand reaching under my garbage bag to touch the purple, crystal butterfly around my neck... she is here too... i smile at my fellow team mates, who not too long ago were strangers... i smile to myself at the strangeness of life and how the loss of one can result in the joining of many... i lift up my garbage bag so they can see my shirt too and they smile in response... united, we are ready to begin...

the line begins to move forward and my mind begins to race... "don't get too excited", "don't start running until you hit the start mat"... "stick to your plan"... "when in doubt, think of Sarah"... the last thought lingers the longest and I forget to notice that my legs have started without me... i feel strong, i feel good.. i can do this...

2 hours, 32 minutes and the finish line is within my grasp... the rest of the race is like a blur of sun, music, sweat, excitement, pain, knees, pressure, thoughts, memories... i feel my mother grab my hand and scream at me to smile... on the sidelines i can hear my sister, her husband and some neighbours screaming my name, i can hear the announcer announcing my arrival and then the flash of what feels like a million cameras.... larry is there and he's hugging me and thanking me for doing this... there are tears in his eyes and before i know it, i too am crying... then i'm sobbing and i can't stand up... i think of her... i think of all the emotions that can sometimes come with physical exertion... i pull myself together...

i'm eating cookies and shoving bananas in a bag when i feel a tap on my shoulder... it's carmela and she has the biggest smile on her face... she has her smile... my knees feel weak but we hug and laugh and talk about how great we feel... around her neck i notice that she too holds a memory... we smile again and say our farewells... we are happy to be here but sad at what has brought us... we remember...

i meet up with the rest of my family and cheer on as many as i can before i feel myself freezing to death... this day has been long, and hard and full of emotion... it's 12:03 as i walk my tired, sweaty body the 4 more kilometres home...  i have done it again... i have done it for her.. and i will continue to until i can no longer feel my feet on the pavement...

TIFFtacular!

so i am in full swing TIFF mode... it's not just the celebrities parties, and premieres, but just the excitment in the air! the feeling that wow, Toronto really is the place to be right now!

this year is my 3rd year of attending TIFF and my 1st as a volunteer... though i'm legally bound to secrecy regarding my insider information, what i can share is that there is A LOT that goes into this festival.. pressure is on and tensions are high back stage as theatre reps coordinate "talent", over 2,000 volunteers and staff, industry and, of course, you, the audience... venues are at capacity and people are lining the blocks outside hoping to get lucky on a rush seat!

for the last few days, my mind, ears and eyes have been filled with camera flashes, celebrity sightings, lineups and, of course, films... eye drops are my new favorite accessory as my films per day quota continues to increase... i've seen a Britsih black comedy, a heart-wrentching documentary, a teen thriller and bits and pieces of a French murder mystery and yet another documentary... most have reflected the exciting originality and creativity not often represented in the typical hollywood blockbuster and what makes TIFF such an exciting event... with new talent emerging and risky subjects explored, the excitement of being part of something "up and coming" is difficult to ignore..

though i'm sad that there are only 4 more days left of the festival, i think i'll be relieved the day my head gets to hit the pillow before midnight...

Image: Karon Liu

the in between...

the time between travels is probably one of the most difficult times for me.. hanging on to the last shreds of carefree freedom... trying to keep my spirits up while getting back into the banality of work...  living through photographs and journal entries... planning the next trip... in the last few years, the time in between trips seems to be growing as the time away shrinks...

for a while it seemed as though nothing interesting was happening in my life... i was alive, but i wasn't actually living... it's bad enough not having a career in an economy-driven world, but not having a purpose.. that was something that i was not willing to succumb to... i started to think about what i could do to fill the void that seemed to be engulfing me... i took suggestions about volunteering, or reuniting with a past hobby.. one friend recommended "working out".. at least you'll be skinny she pointed out...

i'm trying to remember when it happened.. when i started to notice things piling up, one on top of the other until my calendar began to look like schizophrenic nightmare.. i started running again, picked up the paint brush.... i remembered my passion for writing and photography... i bought myself a new journal... i revisited this blog.. a friend pointed me towards cultural websites where volunteer opportunities in toronto were posted...

suddenly i was.. i AM.. involved... and have appointments, orientations, assignments and THINGS in my life again!!

scheduling conflicts are my latest burden is (why does everyone choose the SAME day for mandatory training?!?!) but at least i'm not bored... and i definitely feel like i'm serving some sort of purpose..

life still isn't perfect.. and perhaps it never will be.. but at least the "in between" is seeming less and less unimportant...

today is my favourite day in life... the first day of school... sigh..

Breakfast

mellowing out in mendoza..

anthropologie recently released their september catalogue and i have to admit, my heart skipped a beat when i discovered that it was shot in ARGENTINA (Mendoza, no less)!!

as if i needed any encouragement getting excited about my upcoming trip to the land of mate, gauchos and dulce de leche.. the last time i was there, i believe i was 15 or 16 years old so i'm curious to return after a decade of absence..

these images speak to the stunning, yet rugged, nature of the argentine landscape speckled with the famous Criollo caballos.. enjoy and be taken away...

(larger better quality images can be found on the anthropologie website)

Photos courtesy of anthropologie.com

... a crisis of sorts..

Thar Desert

... i remember when i finished university everyone was talking about the "quarter life crisis"... apparently, this happened in your mid-20's when you finished your degree and had to make a decision on what you were going to do with the rest of your life... for some reason, i totally couldn't relate to this, i mean, i had decided to go to teacher's college, there was no crisis.. teaching was a viable career path and the rest would work itself out.. or so i thought...
...returning from school into an environment where every second person you meet is a teacher and jobs are more scarce than winning lottery tickets, this "quarter life crisis" has pushed itself to the centre of my life... every day feels like an internal struggle between trying to make a go of something that i'm interested in,  while teaching hangs out in the wings, and trying to pay the bills..  everyone around me seems to be settling into their careers and are working themselves up the corporate ladder, where as i find myself working in a job that doesn't interest me in the slightest...  daily i feel plagued with questions of how i got here and how i can move on from this.. i've tried to be productive by searching for jobs and applying for pretty much anything that sparks the slightest interest... but my efforts have resulted in either silence or a series of interviews where my lack of passion becomes all to apparent mid-conversation... how can i be passionate when i don't even know what i want?!
....at night i lay in bed and try and remember the girl that was so full of dreams.. in high school i had so many aspirations that my biggest concern was finding the time to fit it all in... i wanted to see the world first and foremost, to travel to places where others or, at least, few dared... i wanted to help people, to do something that would make my life have meaning long after i was gone... i wanted to spend a year as an artist on the streets of Paris, go camping in the Serengeti, work with kids in distant lands, live in many cities.. experience every thing life had to offer. I was so passionate about everything that i often had difficulty trying to focus that passion...
...being a teacher was never one of my dreams, but it seemed to encompass many of my interests.. i figured i wouldn't be just any teacher but rather, an extraordinary teacher... i would be inspired by some of the great teachers of my schooling and leave my imprint on the lives of others.. i came back from teacher's college so fueled with ideas and aspirations that i could barely contain myself... unfortunately, these aspirations were not shared by the employment climate.. so far, this endeavour has not been fruitful, but i have to hang on to the idea that it may the answer... perhaps where i belong..
i know people always say that things happen when they're supposed to.. but i hate to admit that my patience is running thin..

Summer turned to winter

And the snow it turned to rain

And the rain turned into tears upon your face

I hardly recognized the girl you are today

And god I hope it's not too late

It's not too late

'Cause you are not alone

I'm always there with you

And we'll get lost together

Till the light comes pouring through

'Cause when you feel like you're done

And the darkness has won

Babe, you're not lost

When your worlds crashing down

And you can't bear the thought

I said, babe, you're not lost

Life can show no mercy

It can tear your soul apart

It can make you feel like you've gone crazy

But you're not

Things have seem to changed

There's one thing that's still the same

In my heart you have remained

And we can fly fly fly away

'Cause you are not alone

And I am there with you

And we'll get lost together

Till the light comes pouring through

'Cause when you feel like you're done

And the darkness has won

Babe, you're not lost

When the worlds crashing down

And you can not bear the cross

I said, baby, you're not lost

I said, baby, you're not lost

I said, baby, you're not lost

I said, baby, you're not lost

- Michael Buble

this is amazing...

Oxford...

For a long time I've been considering a move to the UK...mainly because of my undying love for my mother's hometown of Oxford. To some, it may seem like a bunch of stuffy old buildings, but to me, there is such a great sense of history and academia.
Perhaps, one day...

 

This week I...

Got these..

Was guilty of...

Hung out with this cool cat..

Photo by Nicole/Rob

Ran 17K (on 2 separate runs)...

Mike Cheliak Photography Company

This week I...

Ate this at Harlem Underground...

before                                                                              after

Laughed at sleeping Lola ...

Was shocked by this amazing cover shoot..

Got these shoes for 70% off!

Watched this movie at Amsterdam Brewery...

(i'm actually seeing this tonight!)

Ran 23K (2 separate runs)...

another TIFF film...

for the love of words...

The Oxford English Dictionary has come up with a new way to preserve our dying language. Take a trip to "Save the Words" where you can interactively explore some of the many words near extinction. In an effort to preserve, the OED is challenging people to adopt a word if they can make this promise:

"I, Herby promise to use this word, in conversation and correspondence, as frequently as possible to the very best of my ability"

Happy wording!

eat. pray. dud

Photo courtesy of http://photogallery.filmofilia.com/data/media/207/eat_pray_love_11.jpg

There's been a lot of hype recently about India with the book "Eat Pray Love" becoming a best-seller. To top things off, they've recently released a film rendition which stars, Julie Roberts, as the author Elizabeth Gilbert. Having read the book, begrudgingly, after many months of avoidance, I wasn't particularly surprised that I was left with a feeling of meh...  Logistically, the plot had all the ingredients of something I would love (exoticism, food, travel, love), but for some reason, I found myself getting bored midway through India and found Indonesia painfully predictable and totally hypocritical to what I expected the novel to be about.

SPOIL ALERT!
The novel starts by introducing us to the author and narrator, Gilbert herself. It's supposed to be a biographical retelling of her divorce and how she decided to take a year off life to get to know herself. She would travel to 3 countries, beginning with the letter "I" (ironically) for 4 months each. Sounds great to me! But then, out of the blue in Indonesia, this love story blooms, and the rest sort of unraveled from there. I later learned that the man she meets in Indonesia, she ends up marrying (going against another one of her decisions; to never get married again). I started going back over the entire novel in my head and I couldn't help but just feel annoyed, and betrayed by the author.  
I read the book two months after I had returned from India and felt that the descriptions were somewhat overly-dramatized and not an accurate description of Indian culture and life. Gilbert, walks the reader through her firsthand experience in an Indian ashram just outside of Mumbai. In her telling, India is a mix of beautiful colours, smells, peace and calm. Having spent nearly a month travelling all over Northern India, the India she describes is not the India that one experiences when first stepping off the plane.

India for me was an experience like no other.  A mad mess of movement, sounds, smells and smoke. In a country of over a billion people, there is an almost choreographed movement that you can only truly understand once you have witnessed it. Everything had an extremeness to it. This extremeness extended to the people we met in that the poor were extremely impoverished; and those who showed us kindness, expressed an almost overwhelming kindness. Subtlety is not a word I would use to describe India.

The word ashram in Sanskrit means a spiritual hermitage. Gilbert never really leaves the walls of the ashram during her time in India, giving her only part of the whole picture. Part of the ashram experience is to participate in the Indian rituals and practice, such as meditation, yoga, etc., however, it is also to participate in the cultural heritage of the land. India is more than just rice fields and Om, it is a country rich in heritage, history and creativity. For me, this aspect was missing from Gilbert's novel and rather, was replaced by a drawn out "spiritual search" that felt contrived and self-indulgent (maybe that's the point?).

That being said, Gilbert's experience has inspired a movement in North American with a dramatic increase of individuals seeking India as a destination for their spiritual retreat. Am I one of them? Probably. Having only traveled in the North where the majority of tourist attractions, and therefore, the richer density of people are, I think it would be nice to take a glimpse at the "softer" side of India. Hopefully it will be more "spiritual" than my experience in the spiritual capital of Varanasi!

City of Death, Varanasi...


Now i only call this the city of death as it has become famous for the religious cremations which, to this day, take place on the banks of the Ganges River... it was also the place where i felt deaths toll knocking on my door...


"The Ganga" or Mother Earth is where Hindu people believe life begins and ends... every morning hundreds of people come to the shores to bath in the (rather filthy looking) waters which just down the river, will be the cremation site for another.. these cremations take place throughout the day and people travel from all over India to have their loved ones cremated here.. bodies are wrapped in cloth and placed on a pier of wood... the kind of wood used is indicative of the wealth of the individual... there, the bodies are burned and the remains are washed back into the land where they once came...


it's hard for us to understand wanting to bathe in what is so obviously unhygienic water, but it only speaks to the strength of the religion of some...


i had heard a lot about Varanasi and the Ganges before coming to India, so you can imagine my disappointment in being relatively ill for this portion of our trip... unfortunately, my illness was not the only disappointment as with the interests of foreign tourists have grown over the years, the once sacred Varanasi has become a quite commercialized locale... the once peaceful boat rides available along the shore have become more of a novelty tourist trap where your boatman does double duty as a salesman... and wandering holy men are nearly indistinguishable from common beggars.. evening rituals have armed security and friendly conversations have turned into forced donations on skeptical charities...


so much for my spiritual awakening...
 
14 January 2010

Remembering... Scotland

a bonnie bonnie time with my lassie heather!

Glasgow University

so i guess i should mention that I'm now in Scotland with heather and chad in their Glasgow home... so far I've been lucky enough to have some really beautiful weather.... started off my Scotland experience by checking out Edinburgh, the city upon the city... literally, there are bridges in the city over top of the city.. if that makes any sense... google Edinburgh and you will know what i mean.. beyond that, it's hard to get over the history here... every thing is so old and so many things have happened that it's kind of overwhelming... walking down the street you are constantly noticing plaques where someone was burned at the stake or where a famous person lived or was born... it's incredible... we wandered around for most of the day, venturing to Arthur's Seat to try and get a better look of the entire city... the weather held up and we managed to have a lovely day!!


yesterday we attempted to walk around Glasgow and take in it's sights however, weather was not on our side and we ended up catching up on some other cultural things... such as shopping!!! i also got to see heather's school and even met a Scotty class mate!! fun!


today we bused out to St. Andrew's (St. Andrew being the patron saint of Scotland) where Prince William went to school and where the protestant church was first formed in Scotland... it was a beautiful little town with again, SO MUCH history... St. Andrew's is also the birthplace of golf which obviously thrilled heather and i... we were going to play some holes but were slightly deterred by the year long waiting list to get on the green and the 600 pound fee... maybe next year... tomorrow we're off to Fort William over night to check out Glen Coe and Ben Nevis (Scotland's highest mountain).. looking forward to it!
 
13 August 2008

Edinburgh

St. Andrews

Ben Nevis

Glen Coe

Just added to TIFF...

This week I...

did NOT spot Michelle Williams, Sarah Silverman or Seth Rogan, despite the fact that they were filming "Take This Waltz" directly across the street from my house for 2 days straight...

Images from justjared

ate an entire bag of super Nibs.. again...

Had my orientations for TIFF and Nuit Blanche!

Ran 27K (spread out on 3 different runs)...

Drooled over this bike...

Image from curbside cycle

wrote on my blog while at work...

Remembering.... India (Part I)

Smoke

if i could describe mine and Jeff's arrival in India this morning after nearly 20 hours of travelling and jumping forward 11 hours in time... i would say "wow"....
India so far is everything i expected and completely different than i imagined... to start off with, what's with the smoke?!?!?
like any well prepared traveller, i thought it would be a good idea to check the local weather a few days leading up to my departure... on more than one occasion i found the odd description of "smoke" for Delhi.. figuring this was just some Indian terminology for fog or mist i dismissed it when our plane began it's decent into the Indian capital under a blanket of white... it wasn't until we actually gasped our first breath of the white stuff that i realized.. wow, they really meant smoke.... hmmm.. i wonder if this will haunt my lungs in years to come..

other than that... India has been crazy drivers, TONS of people, crowded streets full of every kind of shopping delight, honking cars, scooters, bikes, screaming children, urinating in the streets, colours... and SMOKE...

tomorrow we're off to Jaipur, the pink city, to see if we can start seeing some of the culture beyond the big ugly city... (14 January 2010)