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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
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The Boy wanted a snack to take to his drama class, and being near the Chinese market on center street provided endless inspiration.
"Let's just go to Safeway or 7-11" he said, but I assured him that we'd find loads for him to snack on at the Chinese Market.
We started in the bakery, the bean-paste buns or the elaborate hot-dog pretzels. Nothing more suspicious than a Chinese hot-dog. He won't be persuaded.
So we go the the market, root through the aisles, they have dried cuttlefish, chilies, and hundreds of products that looks somewhat western, until you read the ingredients. We finally settle on a couple of things of Pocky, a mango juice and a bag of Octopus flavored crisps. He's not into the crisps, not really, not at all, but I tell him he'll look very cosmopolitan in Drama class ("who else will have brought Octopus flavored crisps for lunch, I ask you? Tell me one!...") and he doesn't have to eat any of them, he can just offer them around in trade for scraps of other peoples lunches and he gets all resigned and buys them finally to placate me.
Moments like this I tell myself, there is no better father in the world.
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
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"I don't need a grid" I say to myself, "I'll just paint it freehand, like Leonardo Da Vinci or Van Gogh or Picasso..." .
I mean, really, why would I need a grid? How tough can it be?
4 hours into it and I'm looking to MOBA for inspiration, or at least some reassurance, there's none.
It's a tricky thing, this capturing a resemblance. I look at the reference photo. Back to my painting. In pose they're somewhat the same. I'm painting a child, 2 years old. And she has an ear (visible), a nose, 2 eyes, a mouth, all the things that my painting has. But my painting isn't her. Not by a long shot. Not even slightly, not even in the dark. And I try and discover what's gone so terribly wrong.
All the major visible organs. Check. Position. Check. Colors? I'll worry about those later.
There was a moment when I was painting her when she looked exactly like her mother. Well, not exactly, but I could see her. From there she became uglier and uglier, until now, when she resembles no one so much as Doug McKenzie (on the right) or an acid-induced Michael Jackson.
So it's back upstairs, into the photoshop to create the grid, copy it to some graph paper (and verify there's a resemblance...) then go downstairs and see where things went sideways.
"I just need practice" I reassure myself, although there's no reassurance standing in front of this monster I've created...
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
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So there will be no work until they're done.
They're not very vocal, just the "thump thump thump" of their headboard against the wall. They should move the bed.
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
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Still spacey, but I've stopped noticing it.
Now it's the taste of things - or lack of taste. Coffee is bitter. Juice, sweet treacle of sugar, barely registers on the palate, I know it's cold, I know the brand, know that I should be grossed out by the sweetness of it, but I can't taste it.
Salty and savory, on the other hand, taste fine. Taste like more in fact.
And the cigarettes, sometimes I don't even know that I'm smoking them. But I notice the little anxieties, the moments of inexplicable panic when I don't know what's wrong (something's wrong...I just can't put my finger on it...), quitting smoking without cigarettes it was easy to ascribe a cause, now that I still can smoke it's harder - there's no reason for these attacks, but they pass and I get back to what I was doing.
Whatever it was I was doing.
What was I doing again?
I need a list. I have a list, it's upstairs, I'll just go upstairs and get it. In a minute. I should pet the cat. Where was I?
I'm almost out of cigarettes. Tomorrow's quit day. Friends tell me to wait, no need for the quit day, I'll stop without it, I'm not sure, don't want the anxiety of being lost in the suburbs with a craving for a smoke, but I'm trying to quit (when I remember..). And so maybe I'll just try and forget that I'm out, it seems to be easy enough, I'm forgetting everything else...
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
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Day 2 of Champix, full strength (week two of the prescription), and I find myself frequently dazed and confused. Yes, arguably I'm probably frequently dazed and confused, only now I'm recognizing it a bit better. I pour drinks and forget them on the counter, leave burners on on the stove, walk around to do a chore or errand and forget what I set out to do before I arrive ...
I reread the instructions. I have to set a quit date. Friday it is, smoking is giving me little to no satisfaction at the moment, it shouldn't be a problem.
And I make lists. Nothing will get done without a list, and so I keep my pad beside me while I read and make my notes. Never have I so needed the crutch. Although I recall now the spaciness of others quitting on the drug and it makes sense. Now I wonder if the side effects will persist, or diminish, the duration of the drug, but I'll see and let you know.