University and my YouTube Channel

Recently, I started posting on my YouTube channel. So far, I've only done this intro sort of video, but I am halfway through working on two other videos.

The reason I can't continue work on those videos is that my camera is in Toronto, while I am in Montreal. I will be going there in a week and a half to get it, however.
Currently, I am just settling in here, so no pseudo-profound/semi-profound rambling just yet. Although, this entire process has given me a lot to think about. For one thing, I don't want to give up all the interests and ambitions I had before just so I can do well here. And when you're in engineering, I imagine that's easier done than said. But if I give in to that, I won't be able to look into a mirror and see Tree or Tabish. And quite frankly, I am quite fond of him, so I would like him to stick around.
And the good news is that that means I won't let myself stop writing or making short films, even if they have to spring up very inconsistently.

Freewrite: The Hobbit

The following is a freewritten poem. Which should explain its mild shittiness. I am currently compiling footage for another project, so I thought I'd just post this to keep the blog from getting all stale again. See you soon, my imaginary reader(s).


Five in the ancient gold mills fought,
Whose fathers rose in shame,
Whose children later wisdom sought,
Whose efforts were in vain.


Soon as their honour was betrayed,
Where once was harmony brewed hate.


Where once came King lay only Mountain,
Whose peak now stained with beast,
Whose Stone had power truly darkened,
When the Eagles had their feast.


Where Little Men humiliate,
Royal Beards grow weak with hate.


And as the White Beard may have foreseen,
The King faded sorry as fields grew green.

Impulse Post

This post has not been drafted. This post is being written at a time when I've got a million mundane things running through my head like goat-lama hybrids through fields of dandelions that have had the misfortune of undergoing polyploidy in the worst possible way. Yes, this is a freewritten impulse post.
I recently bought an SLR so that I could actually make little films to add a visual aspect to some of my thoughts, because at times, I feel that my command over the English language is not sophisticated enough to convey my thoughts in their original complexity. Also, lately I haven't felt like the same person who wrote the previous three posts on this blog. I feel like conventional education and money matters suffocate (and sadly, often kill) the humans within us, and replace them with very inefficient robots. And the thought that I'm letting myself fall into that just kills me - I recently moved to Toronto and got a job that requires me to work essentially all day every day. Not a day has gone by that I haven't thought about Supertramping this shit. That's a reference to Christopher McCandless.
I apologise if this post isn't as well-written as the others: I figured that if you've bothered to read this regardless of how long it took me to write again, you might actually care about my raw unromanticised feelings at this moment.
The only thing I love about my job is that I get to stay outside and admire the long, stretched out summer sunset. The trees here are fantastic, and for about an hour and a half each day, I feel like it doesn't matter if the next few potential customers don't answer their doors, because I'd rather pause and observe the intertwining veins in the leaves of a maple up against the yellow ochre west. Ah, it feels good to pause between words again, looking for the perfect phrase that makes me feel I've almost done justice to that leaf and that light.
Well, I'm back for now. And I promise future posts will have more depth. I tried writing last month, so I have some posts drafted. Of course, the realisation dawns that there is a chance that none of my 8 followers will actually read this. But that's okay, because even if I haven't a single real follower, I'll still write as if I have an entire community of incredible people who know and understand me. I like blogging simply because of the thought of so many human  beings pouring out their complex thoughts and ideologies and dreams and childhood stories into little corners of the internet. And the thought of such writings staying in those corners, never to be read by anyone, is in itself so perfectly melancholy, like a monochrome photograph of a lone bare tree against a wall that once had paint on it. Or an old tattered diary stuffed in a box and hidden away in That Place In My Mind. Yes, that is perfectly melancholy. And that is how you know I will write again.

That Place In My Mind and My Obsession With Trees

There's a place that I've known for as long as I can remember. It's a big house, with a big garden where there are white rabbits. I have fond childhood memories of the wonderful weather and the sweet old lady that lives there. The only problem is that recently, I came to the realisation that this place doesn't exist.
The reason I'm writing about this in the first place is that I was just listening to some solo double bass, and somehow it just synchronised flawlessly with a dream I had a few months ago. I dreamt of The Place, and it was no longer the home that flourished with bright yellow laughter and soft, content voices. It was no longer the place that came to mind when I thought 'haven'. It was instead another melancholy corner of the world, not burnt down or torn apart, but abandoned - forgotten.
The door that was once left ajar for the children to run in and out as they played was now carelessly left wide open, dispelling even the slightest sense that those who left The Place behind would at least wish to preserve it. It was cold and foggy that day, and as I let myself in, I saw that the fog had worked its way in and enveloped the staircase. I didn't expect to see the old woman, but there she was, abandoned along with her home, standing next to the staircase, the passion, the life, the memories of the summers of alacrity, all torn from her by that merciless son-of-a-bitch, Time. I don't remember what I said to her, but her response was brief. All I remember is leaning in to kiss her forehead and watching her walk away.
I have asked my mother many times about The Place, and each time I recall a new detail, I receive the same blank response. How is it that I could construct such vivid memories on my own and fool myself into holding onto them for all these years? I suppose some of us have a greater need for consolation than others. Perhaps in my case, my mind has betrayed me.
Or maybe these "memories" aren't in fact the result of a yearning for consolation - maybe they are the result of a yearning for escape. I have always loved monochrome photographs, John William Waterhouse's paintings, old tattered handwritten letters, and hammocks. They all represent worlds far removed from the one I live in (yes, even the hammocks). Whether they represent simpler times, elements of fantasy, romantic stories, or a leisurely lifestyle, they each represent a means of escape from the mundane life that I have grown accustomed to.

John William Waterhouse - A Mermaid

I suppose that is one explanation for my obsession with trees - they bridge the world I live in with the world of fantasy, they persevere through generations and they can hold the most fascinating stories. Of course, when it comes to my obsession with trees, that doesn't even scratch the surface.

My Abandoned Film

So this is something that I was working on a little over a year ago. I mostly didn't get what I was going for, which was mostly because I didn't have the sort of equipment that I needed to show you what the hell was (supposed to be) going on. However, I do think I've achieved the general sense of apprehension that I wanted to elicit from the audience, through the use of unusual angles and Jennifer Haines' The Storm Begins. But then again, I have limited feedback. So, anyway I stopped less than 2 minutes through. Now, I'm going to do it all over again as soon as I get my hands on some decent equipment. Until then, this is what I could manage with a webcam and cheap video editing software.

I should mention that this isn't just a string of random images morphed together into bad stop-motion. It's supposed to mean something. It's supposed to depict the internal turmoil that we experience when we fail. This refers to failure in any arena - everything from romantic conquests to altruistic pursuits. This film is meant to explore every nuance of the emotion that results from failure, and I felt that needed to be explored, because as everyone knows, there's a lot more to it than anger and self-pity. For example, you'll notice the first chapter is called Nostalgia. That's how I refer to the feeling of wanting everything to be the way it was just a little earlier, and while it doesn't seem like you could describe that as nostalgia, when you peel back the layers of emotion, you'll see the resemblance (maybe).

I'll discuss it in much greater detail in a later post.

Rambles: Unpredictable Future (that merciless bitch)

I started this blog with no real intention of ever posting anything, but at the moment, all my friends are busy, I've read articles, watched YouTube videos, and studied for hours, and I figured I should write something. So I'll write about something that's been on my mind for about a week now: unpredictable future.
This is something I had already been thinking about when I stumbled upon a YouTube video by young adult novelist John Green.

Firstly, let me tell you everything that was on my mind before I watched this video. I had been thinking about this widespread process of desensitizing that seems to be affecting our species such that as time goes on, we're becoming more and more apathetic. In my head, we seem to be splitting off into groups that have enhanced senses of moral obligation, and (much larger) groups that have deteriorating senses of moral obligation (like I said, becoming more and more apathetic).

This was the initial thought that I started off with. Over the next few days, this thought branched out and I began thinking about apathy in all sorts of situations. I thought about everything from (as ridiculous as it sounds) the sort of principles my future children will develop, to the decline in religious tolerance in some parts of the world, to the rise in religious tolerance in other parts. I thought about the ugliness our species can display through events such as the Sialkot killings, and I thought about the beauty of some of our actions in events such as the rescue of the Chilean miners.

I'm scared to death of the world where cultures split off into extremes, leaving no middle ground. I don't think I want to live in a world where on one side of the globe, there is no distinction between strangers, friends, and lovers, and on the other side, the only means of survival is to stay within a horrifying network of boundaries that makes you doubtful of whether or not you want to survive at all. I don't wish for my future children to grow up thinking that kisses mean next to nothing, and that the experience of sex can be shared with just about anything that has a suitably sized cavity or protrusion (forgive the imagery) just as much as I don't wish for them to have to conform to an arbitrary set of principles that frankly don't make a hell of a lot of sense.

But apart from all this paranoia, I can in fact look to the future with something that can be described as optimism, but I'll talk about that a little later.

First, some comic relief:

If you haven't watched the video, watch it now.

So John Green talks about how none of us can be sure of what lies ahead, and he uses Walter Manlove's headstone to illustrate this, and he goes on about how we tend to latch onto the present without any real idea of how our lives will change as time goes on. But, I feel like he missed something big - he didn't seem to recognise that we aren't always so oblivious to the fickle nature of life. Sometimes, our actions are determined by this capriciousness, so what makes the idea of unpredictable future so much darker is not only that we try to predict it, but that we often try to predict it out of desperation. To me, Walter Manlove's headstone is not so much a promise from his wife, but rather an expression of her wishful thinking.

We know that life doesn't usually work in the romantic ways that we would like it to. Yet, we still etch our names into our lovers' headstones, hoping that just this once, things will be different. And it is that thought that has been getting to me. How many of our everyday thoughts are instances of wishful thinking?

I guess I'll talk more about that some other time. If you're wondering about Gussie Audrey (Walter Manlove's wife), they went ahead and uncovered her story.