Weekend in Ontario

We move into our Toronto sublet today! On Saturday we went to meet the host and have our first in-person look at the apartment. I love the place and the neighborhood and am so excited to start our 7 weeks there.

Over the weekend our family friends took us around southern Ontario. First, we browsed furniture and housewares at the Aberfoyle Antique Market – if we hadn’t been traveling I might have come home with a china cabinet and lots of cups and bowls! As it was, I didn’t buy anything (it wasn’t my fault they had no vintage scarves).

Aberfoyle Antique Market

There were a great many fabulous things I wanted to take photos of, but I felt weird doing so without permission, and I was too lazy/diffident to ask all the vendors. So all you get is a wide shot of the market itself — one small section of it, anyway.

We had Thai food for lunch in the town of Dundas, and then visited the Niagara Escarpment (the same geographical feature that contains the famous Niagara Falls, as well as more than 100 other waterfalls).

Twobugs at Webster's Falls, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada

I loved seeing the trees and the colors of the landscape; it all looks so different from California (as does the architecture). Blossoming trees were everywhere — the below tree was full of busy bees.

Pink and white blossoms

As a California girl, I’m used to seeing redwoods, palm trees, and stucco; brick houses and deciduous trees look to me like something out of a picture book. The below photo is of the recreational area by Webster’s Falls. It’s ridiculously idyllic… but I didn’t want to stop and make a sketch because the sun was strong! Somehow I thought the sun would be less intense further north, but no. I’ll need to get some higher-SPF sunblock than what I brought.

Recreational area at Webster's Falls

Finally, we parked above the lower part of the city of Hamilton, at an overlook. From there we could see Hamilton, Lake Ontario, and beyond it, Mississauga (where our family friends live) and Toronto.

View of Hamilton, Ontario, Canada

Posted in outings | Tagged , , , , , , , | 6 Comments

Open Mic Friday! featuring Cathy John and Look into My Eyes

Happy last Friday of April, cherished friends, and welcome to the Open Mic!

Today I am truly, truly honored to introduce you to my friend Cathy John. I met Cathy in college when she was studying abroad at Berkeley.

There was a small group of us who would get together every Friday night for dinner and conversation. I remember, one lamp-lit evening around our friend Ying’s kitchen table, talking about what we wanted to do in the future. Cathy spoke about the power of the media to affect people and make a difference, and said she wanted to be involved in that.

I’ll let her tell you about Look into My Eyes.

Look into My Eyes, Freddie Yauner (Northumbria Design School), Paul Robson, Cathy John

Look into my Eyes is a book, a ‘Choose your own Adventure’ story, designed to evoke the uncertainty and constant decision-making involved in living with Multiple Sclerosis.  The format, in which the reader makes a choice about how the narrative should preceed at the end of every section, also mimics the way in which MS is not a straightforward condition to ‘read’ and puts the reader in the place of someone with MS hopefully creating a deeper empathy. The book was designed (brilliantly) by Northumbria Design School and I wrote the words. I was diagnosed with Relapsing/Remitting MS in 2010 at the age of 30.

Look into My Eyes cover

Click on the above image or go here to read the book online. You may also visit its page at Northumbria University.

—–

Cathy JohnCathy John is a freelance writer and blogger.

Find her online at lickingthehoney.org.

Posted in Friday Open Mic | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Dream journal: accurate representation

I dreamed that a magazine was running a photo contest: “Which celeb do you look like?” I really wanted to enter, but I could only think of a handful of famous Chinese women, and since the contest restrictions said that the celebrity had to be from the US, that eliminated about half of them. I was in the bathroom with a giant makeup kit, knocking myself out trying to look glamorous, but it wasn’t working.

Finally I wiped off the makeup and took a natural self-portrait and sent it in with the name: “Token Asian.” In the “description” part of the form I wrote a short essay in which I explained:

Until the faces we see on screen and in print more accurately reflect the diversity of humanity, this contest is inherently unfair. Not only is it racist, it’s ageist, sizeist, and discriminatory against a thousand other features from broad noses to thick necks. Since I don’t look like Lucy Liu, Lisa Ling, or even Connie Chung, the closest I can get is “token Asian.”

I woke up before I found out what happened to my entry, but I like to think the magazine editors gave me an honorable mention.

Posted in dreams | Tagged , , , , , | 6 Comments

Visual diary: SJC –> LAX

We’re in Toronto now! Well, technically, the Greater Toronto Area, since we’re staying for the week with my mom’s old friends in the suburb of Mississauga. We arrived yesterday evening after a couple of uneventful flights. The first flight, from San Jose to Los Angeles, was in a little Q400 with only 76 seats. Erik and I were the very last row, and as we neared the end of the hourlong flight, I leaned over him to take photos.

Plane view

Mountains and clouds

Mountains and clouds

Above the clouds

Clouds over settlement

I thought about this journey we’re embarking upon, and tried to look exactly how I felt. Then I stretched out my arm and took a self-portrait. I think it captures my mood: a slightly tense, alert state in between excitement and apprehension; defensive, but ready to explore as soon as I feel safe.

Lisa

As we got closer to LA and started to recognize familiar landmarks and geography, I was surprised how happy I was to return to the city — even if only for an hourlong stopover. This was my first time in years flying into LAX; after my first year or so in LA, I always flew from Burbank (north of LA, but closer to my apartment in Hollywood). Actually, when I stop to think, I realize LA is the place I’ve lived the longest as an adult; it beats out Berkeley by about six months. It’s the farthest I’ve ever lived from my family, and it’s the place where Erik and I started our married life. It’s no wonder I feel a strong connection to it — so what better place to serve as our last California and US stop before the trip?

Green mountains

Mountains and mesas (?)

I felt this huge thrill of reunion at seeing the view below: the Pacific Coast Highway, winding along the beaches of Malibu. We drove that stretch of highway when we took our road trip in 2008; we walked along those mountain trails more than once. I remember my delight when we reached one of the mountain ridges and saw the city and the Pacific stretched out below us; from the plane, I felt the same joy from even higher up.

PCH

When I realized I recognized the PCH, I started looking for another cherished landmark, and found it below: the Getty Center, one of my favorite places in LA (or anywhere). It’s the large pale cluster of buildings in the mountains near the top left. It was Erik who noticed the Miracle Mile in the same view: that serpentine of tall buildings slightly above and to the right of center. You can get a better view of it in the photo below this one.

LA

Miracle Mile

As we descended toward the runway I was about to put away my camera, but a glint of gold caught my eye and I took one last shot. I’m not exactly sure where this one is, but I’m pretty sure that’s the LA river and one of the blander industrial parts of the metro area. Underneath the clouds and the grey-brown haze of smog, in the light of 8 AM on an April Tuesday, it makes me think of nothing so much as a circuit board, carrying all its little signals to and fro across connections unreadable by any but its own kind.

Aerial LA as circuit board

Posted in outings | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

Visual diary: without my glasses

If you’re reading this within eight hours of it being posted, chances are, I’m on the plane to Toronto. (Yes: I scheduled this post in advance. Love that I can do that.) Probably I am feeling nervous, daunted, thrilled, and anticipatory all at once. And, since I’m likely on a plane, I expect I’m tired and dehydrated as well.

In honor of this journey we’re starting, here’s a little toast to seeing the world with new eyes. A few years ago Erik was driving us home from my parents’ house and I had a headache, so I took off my glasses. Suddenly the highway became a fairyland of circular rainbow-colored lights, appearing and disappearing across my field of vision. It was simultaneously magical and unnerving (and it gave me new sympathy for cats when we take them in the car; the view outside can be terrifying when you don’t know what it’s all about).

A couple of weeks ago I was headachy and glasses-off in the car again, and I was telling Erik how sad I was that this view was something I couldn’t share with anyone. I couldn’t paint it, since that would require light and putting my glasses back on; if I tried to photograph it, it would just look normal to everyone else. He suggested I put my glasses backwards in front of the camera. Voilà!

Posted in diary | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 8 Comments

Visual diary: Backpack

My “personal item” for the plane, for tomorrow’s flight to Toronto.

Painting of the contents of my backpack

I was going to do similar drawings for everything I’m bringing, but this one took such a long time, I don’t think I will. Continue reading

Posted in diary | Tagged , , , , , , , | 12 Comments

Visual diary: South San Jose, California

Over the weekend I took a walk along a trail I used to run during high school, when I was on the cross-country running team. It was a warm, bright, sun-heated afternoon, and the trail brought me through old orchards and hills and puddly mud patterned with bike tire treads. I hadn’t brought my camera, but the clean magnificence of sky and grass and trees and creek prompted me to use my phone camera (which isn’t very good). The photos all came out looking drab, so I ran them through some digital effects. They won’t impress any photographers, but at least they now suffice as reference photos for those landscape features that attracted me in the first place.

Wide sky, wide grass-scape

Wide sky, wide grass-scape

Lush green and sparkling water under shade

Lush green and sparkling water under shade

Cloud tree composition

Clouds beam down, trees reach up

Narrow path

Narrow path goes where?

In one week we leave for Toronto.

Posted in outings | Tagged , , , , , | 13 Comments