At the arena

I've spent the past decade ferrying kids to various sports venues all around my city, area and province - and sometimes, outside of that, too. My kids have variously been divers, soccer players, karate devotees, badminton players, wrestlers and ringette players - the latter being the sport that draws the most "??" reactions from people unfamiliar with this most Canadian of sports.

The easiest way to explain ringette is that it's just like hockey, yet completely different. It's played on an ice surface, with 5 players and a goalie on each team; but that's about where the similarities end.

Ringette is a fast, non-contact game that requires a player not simply to push a puck with a curved stick. Instead, the girls (only girls can play this sport) have to spear a rubber ring with the flat end of a stick, and pass it over 2 blue lines to their teammates. It requires lightning- quick reflexes, excellent skating skills and precise hand-eye coordination.

My daughter's been playing ringette for half her life. This afternoon, we traveled to a rink in the northern part of the island to watch her team's last regular-season game. When we arrived, a group of pre-novice (5 and 6-year-old) girls were just finishing up a practice.

I remember how, years ago, I loved seeing these tiny girls looking so fierce and determined in their full regalia, and how these adorable munchkins turned into the ferocious competitors that would step on the ice half an hour later.

Of course, when you are 6 years old, sometimes practice just goes on a little too long...

In winter's grip

Winter isn't just a season around here. It's a state of mind.

It's also a mighty and primal force of its own, which often humbles me with its careless power.

My little wooden house was rocked this week by strong winds that caused the siding to creak and protest, and the thin glass in my ancient sash windows to rattle about like loose coins in a poor man's piggy bank. I also freely admit to panicking a little when I spotted a rather significant quantity of black shingles on my front lawn ... then I noticed they were actually from my neighbour's roof. A selfish "whew" and a neighbourly "oh dear" ensued simultaneously.

We've been pummeled by freezing temperatures and arctic winds for the past two weeks or so. By early February, we often (and falsely) feel as though the worst of the season is behind us, and we start anticipating those balmy temperatures and first hesitant shoots of green (not to mention the mud puddles and fossilized remains of fall trash) that act as signposts to our Eastern spring.

Today, however, I was struck by the casual ferocity of our cold, cold season.

I was snapping a few outdoor pics when I noticed something that clearly did not belong. A stack of neatly piled firewood sat on the side of a neighbouring family's driveway. Nothing unusual, right? But when I looked up, I saw what looked like a Dutch wooden clog glued to an electrical cable strung diagonally in front of this house.

I figured it was just a chunk of wood that had fallen during the family's recent tree-trimming exercise and had somehow gotten caught on the cable. When I looked more closely, however, I noticed it wasn't dangling on the cable. The back of the wood chunk was firmly attached to the cable... by a thick, clear layer of ice.

Wow, Mother Nature. What a whimsical way to prove you have dominion over ALL the land, even the unfortunate bits of flotsam and jetsam that prosaically litter our day. Not to mention the breathtaking sense of timing involved in adhering wood to steel cable with frozen water, in just the right amount to set it overhead like a timber Sword of Damocles (kind of like training wheels, but for medieval weaponry).

Colour me impressed.

Now what?

Day Four of Project 365, and I'm already at a loss how to approach this project. Do I develop a theme and run with it? Do I snap randomly and hope something turns out well once I download and view the daily pics?

A writer friend once complained to me that people would ask "How do you find your inspiration?" at every single party he ever attended. That was his least favourite question, he told me, because "how do you explain that pretty much everything anyone says and does, and everything I see, hear, notice or experience, is grist for the mill?"

Thus, his conversation with his mother, the sandwich he eats at lunch, his argument with his idiot boss (don't we all have those?), and the walk to the Metro after work all get worked into his evolving fiction in some way. Granted, maybe his mother's words come out of the mouth of the love interest in his latest short story, or the Montreal Metro ride gets moved to Paris - but the experiences ring more true in his fiction when they've been experienced in his (or his dear ones) own lives.

And so it goes with photography, I suspect. Maybe it's not about finding that ZING! of inspiration and praying like hell that my rechargeable batteries don't fail me at that exact moment. Maybe it's more about taking the everyday things in life, the small moments and routine bits, and re-imagining them through the eyes of a different viewer.

I'm not sure that makes sense to anyone else. But in honour of this thought, you get... a picture of my breakfast. Enjoy!

Drama llama

Tonight was drama class - or rather, rehearsal for our upcoming play, David Campton's The Cagebirds. It's an avant-garde, strange little play about a (deranged) woman, the Mistress, who keeps a collection of birds/women in a cage. Each of the bird-women has a particular characteristic or personality quirk that distinguishes her from her cage mates.

I love this class so much. It's the one evening of the week that can be relied upon to provide laughs, emotion and a sense of belonging. Our core group of actresses has been together for three-and-a-half years, having performed the Female version of Neil Simon's The Odd Couple, and two thematic plays composed of various scenes and monologues, Depth Perception and Atmospheric Disturbances. We're closer than sisters and have an unbreakable bond forged through performance-night jitters and the emotional processes of becoming a different person in front of an audience without losing your identity.

Sadly, it looks like The Cagebirds will be our swan song. Our theatre closed down at the end of last November, leaving our troupe essentially homeless. We were able to find an alternative rehearsal location in a church basement, but it's a rather uninspiring space.

And it's cold - figuratively AND literally. Some nights, it's hard to emote when you're shivering and bundled in your parka while reading your lines...

Kim plays The Mistress. Tonight, she ran lines with us while our director spoke with each of us in turn about our character's background and relationships with the other birds and The Mistress. With her dance and art background, Kim's a natural at leading our group.

Looking...

Everything I've ever read tells me that being a good photographer is about changing how you see the world.

Most of us look at a scene and see... the scene. People. A sky. A series of items or objects in a particular arrangement.

A photographer sees differently, though. She sees the spaces between objects, the shadows they cast, the possibilities in the tiny details that the human eye captures that are often flattened or bypassed by the camera lens.

I'm trying to learn to see again. It's a challenge of training, of attention and of taking that one extra breath and letting my brain tell my eyes and shutter finger when to snap.

So far, so fun.

Today's photo is a tiny detail of a much larger (and more boring) photo of a table centrepiece arrangement I put together for my son's birthday party this past weekend. I've included the original photo (above), and then today's 365 Project photo is below. Can you tell which part of the photo it is?



Partly Christmas, partly birthday (a blingy ornament from the dollar store) it gave the table some sparkle. By enlarging the centrepiece and playing with contrast and colour intensity, I came up with this photo.

And yes, the de-decorating continues apace around here. Did I mention I chair the Procrastinator's Club in my community? No? I was going to tell you.... eventually. *grin*

I'm back! In many ways!

Ah, my poor dormant, dusty blog. How I have missed you (not, actually).

I'm back because more or less on a whim, I've decided to join my dear cross-country friend Lyn and do a 365 Project this year. Essentially, it's a promise to take one photo per day for the next 365. Lyn started on her birthday last Monday, January 25th and literally within minutes of watching her crystal-clear, evocative photos go up on Facebook, I felt a hankering to do the same.

Except in my case, crystal-clear and evocative, not so much.

As an acknowledged "word person" my double challenge is to develop as a photographer and give myself both the discipline and joy of fun writing on a daily basis. Hence my Swiffering of this old site, along with a bit of elbow grease on the old noggin, and away we go.

So - Feb 1 and Day 1 of the 365 Project:

As a master procrastinator, I only got the Christmas decorations wrangled and put away tonight. Partly it's the festive air they lend the house, partly it's a nod to my decidedly bad housekeeping; but I looked over at my Charlie-Brownesque fern and thought it was worth snapping a shot before everything was stored away for the next 11 months.

The reason the ornaments and lights were strung on a common household plant rather than a fragrant natural tree is that by the time I looked up from my workload and realized "Hey, I really need a tree for Christmas!", there was none to be found anywhere in my community. Or so I was told by the rather sharp-faced woman at the mall.

The thought of a tree-less Christmas was a little depressing, but the concurrent thought of driving downtown and scouring the sad Christmas-Eve-Eve offerings was even more depressing. So instead, we got creative with lights and dollar-store trimmings, and to top (or bottom) the whole thing, decided on a full-sized Italian flag as a tree skirt.

That, my friends, is how we ended up with a Friendship Fern instead of a holiday tree for Christmas 2009. And beyond.