That Golden Place

It can be hard to wake up on time when you don’t sleep, so I’m often late for work. It takes time, too, to fill the big iron tub for a proper bath now that the old schoolhouse plumbing is on the fritz again. So I’m often even later.

The drive is easy when there aren’t so many cars in the way. Instead of jostling around in the Brownian motion of rush hour I just point my car south and try to keep the wheel straight while I let my mind wander.

I’ve taken to wearing these big-ass ugly sunglasses that look as if they fell out of a chronosynclastic infundibulum. The temporal warping power of these sunglasses is that they turn everything orange, so instead of driving through the grey mid-morning I am driving through a permanent golden hour of dawnish dusk (or dusky dawn, if you prefer). I don’t even have to accelerate to 88 miles per hour.

I love that place, wherever it is. That golden place.

This morning I listen to Bach. He’s so organized. It makes me want to take piano lessons. I wish my fingers could sing like that. It’s not unthinkable for an adult without a musical education to do something like that. My brother has recently dedicated himself to pounding through every conservatory grade, and he’s doing fine. He’ll be a proper composer one day. Myself, I’d just like to be able to play a little bit of night music.

Here is a picture of the truck I followed into the city today:

My office is white. Like THX-1138 white.

I have a window but the glass is faceted and frosted as if my office were a washroom. Outside is a very tall snowdrift, so the window shines with whiteness. I can see a little patch of blue sky if I lie on the floor under my desk.

When I come into my white office I take off my heavy black spaceboots and put on a pair of Chuck Taylors, the white man’s moccasins. The act of changing my shoes when I come in makes me feel like Fred Rogers.

And now instead of working I’m blogging, which makes me feel like a teenage girl.

Yesterday the story I’m writing bifurcated. Instead of writing one story I had somehow ended up writing two mixed together, so I decided that enough was enough and tried to tease the two apart. This act of cleavage introduced new complications, so instead of presenting the first finished piece today I’m instead just emptying my head at you.

I had also prepared a rant to post, but upon re-reading it seems to be a very stupid screed which, while peppered with a couple of decent jokes, basically just serves to portray me as an asshole and an idiot. And I really don’t see the need to go down that road any further than I already have. Honestly, I’d prefer that the fact that I’m an asshole and an idiot remain a peripheral element of this blog at most.

Now I’m listening to Haydn. Haydn rocks. He’s the one who first put the chocolate of sonatas into the peanut butter of rondos. Nobody recapitulates a theme like Haydn, man.

My eye sockets ache.

Here is an artist's conception of how aching eye sockets feels like it looks:

Lots of people have given me lots of advice about how to sleep properly, and I’ve taken these tips to heart. Yoga, aerobics, meditation – they’re all good. But nothing quite beats Canadian rye whiskey mixed with muscle relaxants and melatonin, chased by zopiclone tablets or some form of benzodiazepine.

The key drawbacks are tolerance and dependency.

Even now I’m only really satisfied when I double the prescribed doses. Part of me craves for tripling. I find it interesting that my body has convinced me that little tasteless blue pills are actually delicious and sweet like candy. It’s using every trick it can to bend me to the appetite, even though I recognize intellectually that I’m already hovering on the precipice of a slippery slope. Bodies can be obstinate that way.

Damn those wonderful little blue pills! How do scientists fit all that sleep inside them? I reckon it involves some kind of complicated Wonka-esque machine.

I’ve bought a new painting app for my iPad, called Brushes. It’s the app favoured by influential artsy types like David Hockney and Jorge Colombo. Prior to this purchase I’d done all my sketches with Autodesk’s SketchBook Pro.

I’m still trying to get used to it. While SketchBook Pro’s approach might be compared to working with watercolour or oils, Brushes is more like using acrylic. In Sketchbook Pro I can smudge and blend, whereas in Brushes the virtual paint “dries” immediately. Because I have historically been an inveterate blender I find this frustrating, but am compelled by Brushes’ ability to export its canvas at higher resolutions (SketchBook Pro currently tops out at 1024 pixels wide where Brushes goes all the way to a Cineon-like 4096 pixels).

Here is painting of my daughter made with SketchBook Pro:

And here is a painting of my wife made with Brushes:

Brushes is all about volume through modelling with shade and colour, whereas SketchBook Pro allows me to indulge my obsession with edges. Abstracting real world images to naked lines has always appealed to me, though I have been admonished for my reliance on it by artists as notable as Ken Danby and Jan Peacock. I try to heed what they told me, but part of me just can't scratch hard enough at that itch for defining edges. Lines speak to me -- they're like the words of visual media.

I just can't get enough of edges. Also, breasts:

In closing, I'd just like to say that I packed myself a pretty delicious sandwich for lunch. Once I've eaten it the rest of the work day is anticlimax. It can be hard to choose the fulcrum moment. I choose now. See you on the other side.