First Photo Project

They eat o gramada de carne here.
I feel I'm not yet inspired by personal objects, it'll have to wait a bit more.

Ieri ne-au dus o tanti, Lucille, je crois que son nom s'epelle, all over the town. Should I call it a town? Or a settlement?
The whites and blues and greys are driving me nuts.
I stare at my photos and I'm afraid people won't see them as I do, like when I am convinced in the morning that I'm beautiful, and then I come back convinced of the opposite.
John said my photos sort of remind him of concentration camps. So I guess the tone I use is cold and resemblant to that of photography in the early 20th. Je ne sais pas si ca me derange, parce que j'aime bien mes couleurs.

Scriu in trei limbi pentru ca Eric suggested it. See what comes naturally. Well, shit, English comes naturally, but I take the point que ca va me faire pratiquer les deaux autres langues.

J'ai parle avec certains quebecois installes ici as teachers and they always ask me to repeat stuff. Sunt ei surzi, sau vorbesc eu ca si cum am o pula in gura, for god's fucking sake?

I think I like the 10th photo the most. But there's a reason to my visual ramblings in landscape, I guess.

Gabriela, fata din Cegep cu papucii de quilles that you disliked so much, came recently from Berlin, to spend the break. We met and went for what ended up being an expensive meal - I mean, la bugetul meu, a sum total of quarante dollars, ca rend froid - and movie and grocery-story food sneaked in at the movie.
Then we went home and she slept over. And we went through her photos and I was showing her the photos I like from the ones she has and the ones I don't.

In clasa, ultima vineri din curs, ne-a aratat un dying quebecois dancer, what's-his-face: the one who went travelling and then said that if you don't notice a woman sleeping on the ground as you walk, you're not an artist. I took his quote at face value, but now I'm doubtful...

I used to be jealous of you, Bogdane, ca tu cand merge pe strada vezi mai multe decat mine, you have that sensitivity to surroundings and the required curiosity. As I said in my Letter of Intent, I guess: I notice cars and houses and declare the environment as 'safe', you notice how many cars, the types of houses, individual colours and windows, etc. Ca atunci mai demult cand am iesit de la metrou pe partea cealalta si m-ai intrebat data am vazut vreodata omul ala care canta la pian.

No, I didn't. I don't notice these things.

So Gabrielle came over and I think qu'elle est bel et bien coincee dans la photo des annees 60, or something. Okay, fine, j'exagere. But I've been looking through the photo books you left at my place and I recall loving the style, and now that's just not me anymore. We both looked through the books because she slept over. I understood why I dislike her photos:

She cares about the subject, and I don't. She makes it documentary photography and, to me, it feels that what I do is a bit different.
We went through many photographs, but one illustrates, to me, our differences. It was in the Zona book, I think, and they we out by some river, I believe. And it sort of blew my mind away, and I asked her if she liked the photo and she said que non, 'cause nobody's staring at the camera and the people are too small to be seen clearly. And I swear to you I didn't even notice or care about whether or not someone was looking at the camera. What I saw was the pattern. the curve the people did, orange against green and brown. It didn't even matter that they were people.

I think my eyesight and lack of diligence in wearing mes lunettes en tout temps fashions me to see the world that way, and now I want to exploit that, in a way. That's where it feels that I am.

Sure, I want to get Laser surgery and be able to see clearly and in focus more than just a few feet in front of me, but right now, I'm just amazed by this simple realisation - that I can take photos according to patterns and not that much about the subject.

The self-portraits were about the subject, not pattern, since I was going in almost blind, unable to see exactly where I'd be and how my body looked precisely. Even though, I guess, it came out to be about blotches of colour anyway.

But, yeah, c'est a-peu-pres ca. I came here and sort of forgot about the older plans and started trying to go through this new thought, that I like patterns, and la valeur of this thought. So, so far, it seems I've been... scaping, landscaping.

I'm still thinking a lot about the project I had, though. I have some objects I want to take photos of around the house, and the house itself. A weird toilet, and some Inuit-made sculptures my mommy bought.

---
This project was supposed to be about becoming Canadian.
A couple of days ago I felt Canadian. On the plane.

This engineer, a really masculine looking woman, was sitting next to me. In fact, she let me have the window seat. And she has kids - well, macar o fata - that's in primary and is lactose intolerant.

But the point went as this: stateam si vine the flight attendant to ask us if we want drinks. I take o cutiuta de Oasis. I state: wow, I haven't had one of these lunch-box formats since I went to grade school! Then I started blabbering about how I remember liking when the teacher would ask, at 11 o'clock, pour le temps de la collation, how many little boxes of milk we wanted. I always wanted two or three. That's how I found out her daughter is lactose intolerant.

But I never felt more Canadian than I did recalling the milk and the juice. I FUCKING GREW UP HERE.

And to tell you the truth, I've been feeling a wave of hate for everything Quebecois since then. The number of times I hear 'go back to your country'. The number of times they make me feel like I don't speak proper French when it is as accurate as theirs, minus the joual. FUCK THEM for ever even making me think I'm not freaking Canadian.

I mean, certainly, there was a point where I wasn't, when I was toute frette off the boat, but 'sti, la, ca fait un sacre d'bout d'temps, la.

And I was talking cu Gabriela si cica imi povesteste mie ce a facut-o pe ea sa rada de nu a mai putut, vezi doamne. Cica intr-o zii a vorbit cu un tip din Vancouver cand era la Berlin. Si cica ea il intreaba pe el ce fel de mets traditionnels au ei acolo la BC, ceva sa fie "all Canadian". Si tipuls spune... "Well, dunno, maple syrup?" So of course she cracks herself laughing at this, couse, gee, maple syrup is Quebecois, not Canadian. So then she asks quoi d'autre, of course, and he answers "Poutine is Canadian?", so this clearly makes her roll on the ground cracked with laughter.
And then she states something to the effect that if you took Quebec out of Canada, there'd be no culture left.

And that's maybe the point where my face fell off to the ground and my eyes popped and I cringed hard-core, like a blowing (-orgasm).

Excuse me, Miss. My brother and I mancam ciorba cu telemea all the time, do you think it's a notable invention? Certainly nu se poate sa fie as amazing as sticking fucking gravy on cheese and fries, no siree.
Sau matale crezi ca saraci Inuiti te-au aseptat-o pa bunica-ta ca sa descopere ca poa sa beie "meipal sirap", da? Fucking whore.

Maybe I should wiki these things first, though. Maybe it is the quebecois -- who were just FRENCH at the time -- who discovered Maple syrup. Let's see.
*Quick research*
"Maple syrup was first collected and used by Native Americans and First Nations, and was later adopted by European settlers"

Aww, look at that.
Fuck me.

Alright.

---
I took books from the library. On what it means to be Canadian. I haven't read a single word yet.
I don't know what my project is about.

But my mommy will recycle more once she gets home, I think. Maybe she's becoming just a bit more Canadian.