Monday, May 18

Goodbye

This is my final post in Heart's Inflections.

I don't know if I would have chosen that name a year ago, and even though I waaay slowed down on this blog, it was a nice place to experiment being me.

I am going to start journaling (with actual pen and paper) instead.

Love.

Wednesday, May 13

Friday, March 20

On the shores of the (frozen) lake

Wish you were here...


Here's to a good weekend.

Thursday, March 19

Forgotten

Frozen lake water crystallized. Yardstick of human accomplishment in nature. Forgotten.

Wednesday, March 18

cultural propaganda

Today's treasures of inspiration

The following image is partly why I like to look at propaganda posters for style. Simple, bold message, a few colours, a basic image. All designed for maximum impact.
From here


Even though this style isn't my personal favourite, it definitely gets kudos.


Dark, rich colours and designs with a brighter tone of flight against the white.
From here


This one brings me somewhere in emotions, in spirit. Familiarity and comfort seeps into me... Brings me to daydreams.


I LOVE this art style. Simple, thin outlines, monochrome shadows unify this image, convey stillness, peace, comfort.


Bold, a little hip to appeal to the right audience


Absolutely hilarious.... his posture, the simple typography... Just as the image is very basic and fundamental, so is the problem.

Tuesday, March 17

Vagina's message

I saw the vagina monologues twice last week, and they were amazing! It was inspiring to listen to many different stories. Overwhelming sadness flowed, two stories of women treated like objects, dehumanized. Other times, woman won the day over men. One woman only found her clitoris in her eighties.

All these were stories of women just being women, no excuses or apologies. It was liberating!

As a result, I made thank-you posters for all the actresses.... and I loved them a lot! Giving them away was so tormentous, I almost kept all 16 for myself.

Be well.

Monday, March 16

Light, shadow, reflection

Just some odds-and-ends photos... random things I kind of like because they're slightly odd...

The way they play with the light, a dance of shadows

And strange reflections.


Thursday, March 5

Photo travel

I've been away this past week, and I will still be away for a couple of days. Here's a preview of some of the sights I've seen thus far:

Telus World of Science in Vancouver


Friendly tree I sat in for four or so hours on Saturday.



To be continued....

Thursday, February 26

Autumn rain

Edited for colour, contrast, plus the blurring around the corners. Taken around November, the rainy season in Squamish.

Wednesday, February 25

Flowering

She said, I don't wash on Sunday
as she brushed aside the fear bells
barefoot prancing through the wooded
flash by dreams of sunny maples,
no thin saplings more.

She turned and waited
whispered, I love freely now
showed her heart to me.

She murmured something close
cool maple shade soothing old wounds
then set it free.

When I walk through syrup sun
and shifting shafts of shade
I hear a flutter by
recalling trembling wings
of the heart that learned to fly

The spider's web

(It's a bit blurry when it's big, but this small, the image is not as cool...)
Taken last night on a walk at 2 in the morning with Hannah and Miranda. I just happened to have a camera with me (as always), so captured the tree we were admiring. Don't you think it makes an excellent creepy late night walk photo?

Tuesday, February 24

The day I almost died

These are some older pictures, but I haven't shared it yet besides with the people who went with me. I made it to almost the top of a mountain in two days!

I wanted some adventure that weekend. In fact I was going to ask Kevin, Mr. Hardcore-in-shape, if he wanted to go for an extended hike in the afternoon. I am eating lunch when he comes over to me and asks if I'm up for a hiking overnight stay! How fantastic is this! I immediately agree and go to my room to pack and get ready.


After some delays, where Kevin took the longest to pack, we stopped to pick up a giant block of cheddar cheese from the cafeteria, numerous protein (and in my case, candy) bars, some supper for the road, along with four of those giant hiking backbacks filled to the top (with, in my case, much borrowed gear), we are off.

To a completely different destination than we had originally planned.
Plan A involved a couple-hour hike, riding a cable car across a river to hike another hour to cabins for the night.

Plan B involved us monkeying across the cable that held the car because we couldn't get keys to said cable car. In the dark, because we had taken too much time trying to find the keys.

Plan C involved us climbing up an entire mountain in the dark, aided by flashlights and headlamps, setting up tents (in what we discovered was a thin layer of snow!), and getting up to climb to the top the next day.


The overestimation of my physical ability pulled us down like the heavy bag on my back. Hannah offered to 'trade packs with me', which was generous considering she had no pack at the moment. She and Leah had split a bag so at any one point one person was burden-free. Even when I was unburdened, I was only keeping up to everyone else.

Leah also traded packs with me once, and Kevin constantly stopped to wait for me. After five hours of hiking in the dark and cycling the weightless pack throughout our group (with a bias towards me), we made it above the snow line.

This is at a time of year when there was no snow, so we ascended the seasons as we climbed the mountains.

This photo is what I woke up to the next morning. We took a few photos, ate breakfast, packed one bag to carry lunch and extra layers, and hit the trail again.

We hiked above the level of the lake, into what became alpine meadowland. They were so picturesque, slightly reminiscent of some scene in the European mountains. Maybe Heidi was around the bend.


Being a city child, of course I hadn't eaten enough at breakfast, so every step I took drained me of an already low reserve of energy. Sarah, sticking to my painfully slow pace, urged me to take it step by step, and encouraged me with the promise of food once we reached the top.


There we had a picnic. My mood was elevated, my body was reenergized, and I knew that there would be no more climbing up. I clambered down the mountain like a nimble little mountain goat - well not quite, but I can say I survived the Garibaldi Hike.

Friday, February 20

Commentary on the state of the Republic

My Spherical Trigonometry class is hardcore. Glen, our tutor, is a great teacher who leads us along to the answer without actually making us go there. Actually, the best thing about Glen is that he makes us all interested, he tells a story about math. He'll tell us where this theorem originated, who did it, and a bit about that (supposedly) famous person. And how this completely changed math. (since we're learning theories in chronological order, we completely appreciate newer and better ones).


Glen pushes us and we just push back, darn it! Hannah became sick and Durgen didn't sleep for two nights because of a math assignment. We're all getting pretty good marks, making Glen's grading curve go to " H-E-double hockey sticks". And I was one of three students who apparently did what was almost unthinkable on 'Glen' assignments and got an A.


Most of the time, class ends, and we all just stay there doing work. I would probably think that it's a lot more sad if I wasn't part of it... In fact, we figured that we spend a minimum of ten hours a day on math. (maximum averaged 18, more math than sleep!) And if you look at numbers of people who are thinking about math, it's always AT LEAST 17 (number of people in our class). And we get lovely conversations going at dinner with people who aren't even in the class!


Is it normal to search YouTube for 'triangle'? Most of us have by now had several math dreams, or see Menelaus figures in between people you're having conversation with. (It's also known in our class as the Star Trek Theory. You can see it to the right.) When we meet each other in the hallway, we'll start talking about Sperical Trig. We honestly can't stop thinking about it! So to restate, our class is hardcore.

Well as I said earlier this week, I was looking up propaganda posters for inspiration in style and feeling. I made this because we are all so devoted to our beloved Spherical Trigonometry. In fact, we decided to take a class picture in which everyone had part of a lénart sphere on their head. (A lénart sphere is a clear, basketball-sized glove you can draw on with wet-erase markers.) I think this would be more under 'political cartoon' genre than propaganda, but I still like it:

It's modeled after the American Pledge of Allegiance, with a couple of small modifications... Oh, and that thing in the background is a diagram of Napier's rules for Sines (and cosines and tangents)... This is what I created! I'm excited and amused by myself. Even though I was being vague so as not to ruin the surprise, I even asked Glen if I could boost my mark with it.

Tuesday, February 17

Captured light

Annie, my Molecular Biology teacher from last black, decided to start a photo club. We have a theme for each month, and anyone can submit up to 3 pictures on the theme. Then we all get together and view a slideshow, discussing each shot. These are the three I submitted. Trees on a foggy day with increased contrast, Quest at night with only minor overall colour adjusted (there are two different colours for the different lights around campus, I simply made it more red overall)

Planty things with light on them... I don't actually know what they are, fuzzy things...

Monday, February 16

We Want You

This is for you, Jon. And Sam, too. So I went to La Ligne Verte and at the bottom was the Grammar Natzee poster. Coincidentally, today in spherical trigonometry I was looking at propaganda posters for inspiration. Some of my favourites are:

What I love about these is that they're simple, bold, and direct. I've chosen posters with different art styles. The "join now" is black on yellow, eye-catching, bold and simple. It's to the point. Do it. The "Liberators" is something like what we would see in a newspaper. It's more nuanced, with political statements about what America does (and doesn't) represent. It's a Nazi poster against the U.S., and gets on some of those historically touchy subjects in the U.S. I really like the "Ja" poster's art, it seems more real. Maybe that's the point of the poster. The goal of this one is to get people to vote yes in a referendum.

It's advertising. In politics.

Sunday, January 25

Extra-physical: numerology

This link takes you to a so-called birthday calculator. Numerology is one of those controversial 'sciences'. Those who have a disposition towards these things sees how it works beautifully with their lives. Others scoff that the location of Pluto at your birth has any effect on your personality. I tend to swing back and forth on the issue, but I do think that the success of numerology, like most things in life, depends heavily on your mindset.

Once I entered a bookstore in Squamish. The owner was into numerology. The wooden floors creaked and books of spirit filled the first shelves leading down the long shop. My friend and I had entered about ten minutes before closing, but Margaret, the owner, let us browse around. When it came time for me to choose between three books, numerology came out. Margaret found the number of each author's name to see if it matched my own. Then she locked us in the warm store and whispered reverently about Elvis Presley's birthday. She told us about personality traits manifesting themselves in our physical bodies. She confided that I had discening eyes and trusted to me the secret of using the 'white light'.

Margaret had been a waitress for many years, had taught herself some people skills that made her a compelling server. Her ability to weave a story and keep you, with a mix of interest and sticky uncertain escape, struck me and stays with me still.