It is a sweet, ambiguous, ironic illusion
what I create.
It is the awakening of colours that may or may not have actually resided in the canvas threads of this moment
It is a symphony of rich, strong-willed voices.
The volume is key here
not the words
or the content
or the hidden meanings.
Here, the music is so loud you might as well be talking under water.
But you can hear whatever you want, too

I can be your silence.

With a flushed face and sparkly, absent-minded eyes
she’s having the most interesting conversation she’s had in a while
He
just likes the absence of uncertainty.
And don’t get me wrong
Not many step into this deal with something in mind
I create the purpose
the goal materializes out of the hot, saturated air the moment you step into it
–the moment you embrace the insanity and choose to be a part of it
Let go,
Let go,
Let go.

Have another sip.

She takes a long deep breath of the look in his eyes
He can see the ocean on her breath, you see
He can see whatever he wants
They paint their own pictures.
Ah,
‘This isn’t real’, you say
‘When they leave, when the world goes back to sleep in the morning
the spectacle vanishes.’
Well, let me ask you one thing about your grand views on sobriety
What if one is as often drunk
as one is not?
What becomes the reality then?

Awareness doesn’t come only in sharp, solid images.
In the morning she remembered the heat
and the colours
and that he was from a small town in Ontario.

Broaden the perspective

This blog was initially intended to merely serve as a clean empty medium for me to release the loads of observations that I was going to make once I moved to my new city. I often think of creating things and exposing them to a certain audience as an adequate way of arranging my thoughts and reaching a clear mindset. Being of a somewhat opinionated nature, my writing has often reflected exactly what goes through my brain and how I personally see things. Lately, however, I’ve been struggling with a concept that has very much proved its relevance in many aspects of my life. The question that keeps coming up is: why do we put so much value in our own individual perspectives? If the world around us is more accurately an idea of the world around us that has been formed based on the viewpoints of the billions of humans that have lived since the start of life on this planet, why is it that we spend so little time acknowledging and learning about the different perspectives of the people around us? How is that we never interrupt our own train of unjustified, groundless judgements to put ourselves completely in another individual’s perspective and seen matters through their eyes with pure impartiality? It is a concept that is impossible to be perfectly practiced, of course, since absolute objectivity is a non-human quality. But I think this is an idea well worth dwelling on. We might not be able to form an image of the world other than what is seen with our own vision, but we can certainly expand that image by adding to it things that others have observed and we have not.

With this mindset, one might come across what I’ve been experiencing for the past while which is “the struggle to be certain in an uncertain world” –as John Patrick Shanley, the writer-director of Doubt puts it. But nonetheless, I prefer to have the wider vision.
Put all the eyes on the table. Let’s switch.

Empathy.

When I was in grade five, my class put on a skit for the school. As part of our act, we hung cardboard seagulls from the curtain rods and had students throw 'rocks' (crumpled up balls of paper) at them. "Freeze!" In a flicker of stage lights, three students came onto the stage to replace the seagulls that were simultaneously being hoisted out of sight. The scene continued.

The theme of our performance was 'animal empathy'. While brainstorming for ideas a few weeks prior, my teacher had explained: "Empathy means putting yourself in something or someone else's shoes."

Her exact words have stuck with me for nearly eight years. Compassion is very important to me and I consider empathy to be its close sister. As an aspiring journalist, as well as a part of this project, I think that being able to see the world through other people's eyes without personal bias is an important skill. The world is big enough for all of our perspectives and attitudes to co-exist, and what better way to learn about them than to try to experience them for ourselves?

I'm ready - to be a seagull, to be a rock, to be another person, and above all, to practice empathy.

To end off on a light note, here is a humorous quote: "Before your criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way, when you criticize them, you're a mile away and you have their shoes." - Jack Handey