March 31, 2002
Woman

Her hair was three shades of grey, maybe four, five or six, but the dullness of the morning made them silver. The bench she sat on was dark chocolate brown, isolated and park-like and out of place on the street corner, just beneath the traffic lights declaring red-amber-green according to some mysterious algorithm. She wore a dark coat, or cloak, folded around her like hours past midnight, and a soft handbag of purple and white flowers.

A testimony of loneliness, or of waiting for time. We turned the corner and she whisked out of sight, gone forever from the side-mirror.

Posted by sniffles at 06:54 PM | Comments (0)

March 29, 2002
Flowers faded

"From that moment on a profound metamorphosis of the sensible world took place. In New York harbour it was no longer the Statue of Liberty that lighted the world, but Love, which is different."

"Soluble Fish", Breton.

I'd spent the bulk of the day making jewellery. The morning was threaded by bracelets, the afternoon fashioned by earrings for Haiyan's earring swap.

There's something oddly therapeutic about all this.

Fresh Antipasto: Flow like flowers faded.

Posted by sniffles at 07:02 PM | Comments (2)

March 25, 2002
Glass

In between worlds, one becomes a ghost, not quite flesh, not quite soul.

Posted by sniffles at 11:22 PM | Comments (2)

March 24, 2002
Meander, meander, meander

We've driven round the same streets numerous times now, looking for some place to stay. I am beginning to wonder whether I have run out of luck, or whether it's time to change tact, or maybe I'm just downright impatient when it comes to certain things. It is all somewhat frustrating.

So ... apart from that, today, I made a damn good salad. I did the washing. I watched as a friend took apart the shed in the backyard which we didn't want to keep. I hung out the washing. I cropped the ferns, the English lavender, and a plant whose name I don't know, pulled out weeds and grasses, and watered the flowers. I brought in the washing.

A dinner with family with the usual warmth and comfort. Some time spent wrapped in a reality around a voice too much missed, too far away.

Karl pointed me to the recent discussion on SXSWbaby! about the digital divide, which led to a curiosity about the spread of weblogs across the world. I don't think the statistics on Eatonweb are necessarily accurate. So, go on, add yourself in the right spot if you haven't already.

Oh, and we are now powered by Movable Type Version 2.0. Hurrah!

Posted by sniffles at 02:20 AM | Comments (0)

March 22, 2002
Blue-grey

I shall forever want to write of blue-grey mornings, forever running out of the same notebook, forever delighted by the same gum trees flitting by, stretching above surprising explosions of pale blue flowers.

Earlier, a boy wore music in his ears which were tiny syncopatic buzzes to the rest of the world. Somewhere in those earphones, little men with sweaty long hair head-banged over their crash hot guitars and angry drumkits.

Orange streetlights dangled upwards, mocking the lazy sunrise. The trees are ripening and soon they will shed their delicate garments to welcome the winter.

(Thank you Barnaby, you're the sweetest.)

Posted by sniffles at 08:59 AM | Comments (0)

March 20, 2002
Mush

New Antipasto entry: I like people who are kind.

Two hours of usability testing with paper prototypes.
One hour of lunch with a lovely but indecisive gaggle of girls.
Several hours of re-establishing reality and failing.
Three hours of French.
Half hour of commuting in pitch darkness.
Someone said the average length of a shower is 35 minutes.

Brain is suitably mush.

Posted by sniffles at 11:44 PM | Comments (0)

March 18, 2002
Adrift

New Antipasto entry: Adrift.

A day of sleep and recuperation, punctuated with discussions with friends much too far away, yet with warmth that travelled even such great distances. The occasional burst of work-related emails, dealing with items which were plaguing my mind a little too much even as I struggled to maintain a sane level of clarity.

Sleep does wonders, though.

Posted by sniffles at 09:59 PM | Comments (0)

March 16, 2002
The circle

Sam and I finally met up at our appointed place, twenty-minutes later than we'd meant to. But it didn't matter, neither of us were in a hurry. Down the street, passing shops, passing people, passing time. We poked our noses into a jewellery store, a book store, an art/craft store.

On the way to the cinema, we walked past the square next to the town hall typically reserved for public art. It was empty today, except for a new copper statue. Well, we thought she was a statue. Until she moved and appeared to be talking to passer-bys. She was lovely and gracious, and allowed me to took some photographs. (#1,#2,#3 and #4.)

"Dayereh" (a.k.a. "The Circle") is about the injustice women face in modern day Iran. The film, banned in Iran itself, is raw, unpolished yet crafted, its script plain and unpretentious, lending its scenes a sense of reality with no impression of exaggeration.

I walked out with a strange mix of anger, sadness and disbelief, and wondered why there were so few men in the cinema - even in this lucky country - watching this important film amongst the sizeable number of women who were there.

(Happy birthday, Karl.)

Posted by sniffles at 05:05 PM | Comments (2)

March 14, 2002
Not muchness

A long day of work. Several hours of task-hopping, a three hour-long meeting, three hours of French. Oui, j'apprends le français. Yet somehow, a long day of nothingness, not-muchness. My heart flew and dwelt in other places; I visited England, France and Canada at the same time.

A girl was trying to survey people on the tram. "Why do you avoid politics?" she was asking. Thinking about the conversation with Barnaby much earlier in the day, I spoke a little about your average person's tendency to self-absorption. For the most of us, until our basic needs are threatened, it doesn't occur to us to care about much else.

In the process of sorting out bookmarks, I'd rediscovered a couple of zines which I'd never had time to read. "Designing Web Navigation: Traffic Light, Not Neon Light" talks about ... well, just that. Your good basic guidelines and so forth, but I don't necessarily agree that links have to be blue when unvisited and purple after they've been clicked upon. I believe most users are now a little smarter than that - the importance lies in being consistent, and having links which are obviously different from the rest of the text. There exists a small study on link affordances conducted in October 2000 - does anyone know of more recent (and wider) research?

Much to my joy, I found a working Figlet server, and a fairly handy page of Figlet fonts.

Posted by sniffles at 12:24 AM | Comments (1)

March 10, 2002
The spaces inside

The weather is warm and lovely, with all the vigour and brightness of summer that is taunting autumn's arrival, but I don't feel like wandering outside. There are places to go in my head, and things I should do whilst at home - not that I have done any of them today. But I will catch a film as part of the French Film Festival later on this evening.

Have you noticed that this blog-impersonation is lacking external links lately? I have. I think it's the same reason as why I don't feel like wandering outside. Last night I realised I haven't played the piano for a week, and that in itself is odd.

So ... happy birthday to Dan, who threw me this link on Gateway's answer to the new iMac - why can't non-Apple people come up with something that looks trendy? Karl redesigned, and pointed to an interesting critique of the W3C.

And I finally met the very lovely Agie today - we believe in God, hamburgers, coffee and saying "reckon". And I reckon this is all very cool.

Posted by sniffles at 05:25 PM | Comments (4)

March 09, 2002
Point and shoot

I finally did something about the photographs I took in Montreal. There are not many (my camera didn't like the cold), and most of them didn't turn out all that well (my hands wouldn't stop shaking).

Sometimes, I'm incredibly stupid. There's a snail mail that's been here for a while, that for some unexplained reason, I did not get around to opening. One of my poems seems to have been selected for publication. In a book.

Like. You know. Paper. Book. (!!!!!!!)

I'm hoping that it's not too late for me to return the Artist's Proof ... *prays*

Posted by sniffles at 09:37 PM | Comments (4)

March 07, 2002
Scaffold

When you're built soft on the inside, you crumble sometimes. The biscuit left out of the jar, becoming dry, brittle, insubstantial. Tasteless.

It seems oddly ironic that one could build an exterior of strength, that being strong seems strangely easier than being weak. And sometimes, I'm grateful for the exterior - my exterior of hard logic yet deeply humane - it becomes a scaffold whereby you can once more pull yourself up from the inside, and move on.

Posted by sniffles at 10:16 AM | Comments (0)

March 06, 2002
Shadowed steps

We talked and laughed about fonts. I am by no means a font-geek. Still, there's something frighteningly fascinating about font fashion.

The sun was high and it was very hot, until the cool breeze came from the south much later and ruffled everything, including the temperature. Blistering summer heat, the unforgiving glare, the blast of white light which made shadows more real than whatever they were attached to. Then again, what is real?

I have been in much danger of brooding these few days. I try not to. Occasionally, the thought that nothing lasts forever hits hard - that one day I may no longer talk to the people I love today, that I may no longer be able to write, that the things I find joy in may no longer exist.

But perhaps that is the true definition of beauty? Moments of joy and love are beautiful because they are only temporary.

Posted by sniffles at 06:43 PM | Comments (1)

March 04, 2002
Fragments of days beautiful

The song in my head is the same one that I woke up with this morning, yesterday morning, and the morning before that. Why are all the mornings grey? The blandness lodges itself in my head and fogs my mind.

I am running out of notebook. I dislike running out of notebooks. After a time, the words you write and the hurried sketches of whatever caught your attention at the time take a life and definition of their own, and all these you have to eventually shelve away to allow room for other words, other thoughts, other silly idle doodles.

My current notebook contains my words throughout my month of February: a single poem written out a dozen times (each slightly differently), sketches of my days in Montreal, Paris, Kuching and everywhere in between, a poem that invaded my sleep at 5:30 am in Normandy, addresses, phone numbers, letters, and things that I ought to write about some day.

I'm not ready to shelve these thoughts just yet, but notebooks running out of pages to fill is a sure sign that time is passing, and that days are moving along.

Posted by sniffles at 10:39 PM | Comments (0)

March 01, 2002
Minimal grey

The waitress kept giving us strange looks. Perhaps it was because we were not talking very much. My poached asparagus and ricotta looked rather minimalistic on the white porcelain plate when it arrived. Sitting in comfortable near-silence, eating, drinking, glancing around and thinking vague thoughts, shrouded in our own individual loneliness.

Posted by sniffles at 05:08 PM | Comments (0)