Weekly Photo Challenge – Page 2

Seeking Boundaries

October 7, 2015 Katharine Asals19 Comments

I am newly arrived.
I have just come to this place after many travels, and will settle here.
A house has been given to me, or I have taken a house – I find myself in a house that seems like maybe it belonged to someone before me, but there it is, it is mine now.This house, this place is out on the edge of and yet part of a community – a school? A town? A hippie commune? A camp?
I am now part of this community in my little new / old house.
But I’m concerned about security.
There have been transgressions before – incidents have occurred in the past, violations of the perimeter have been known to happen.
Absolute securing of all boundaries is necessary.There are the usual doors – front door, side door, back door. This is my first line of investigation. None of them are particularly sturdy. None of them inspire absolute confidence.
But there are also 2 doors at the bottom of the stairs that lead up to the second floor – a pair of wooden doors that seal the upstairs from any intruders that may make their way into the first floor.
One of these wooden doors doesn’t close properly – it won’t lock.
This is a concern. Upstairs I am rooting around in things, cleaning the place, looking for tools, turning over the problem of the less than sturdy doors, the unlocked door in my mind.
Up on this second level there are piles of rich colourful fabrics scattered around on the floors.Some movement underneath the fabric turns out to be 2 tiny translucent kittens. As if they are so young and so new and so tender, they aren’t quite actually there yet – they are mere outlines, and are otherwise see-through.
It wasn’t in the plan for this house, to take on cats, but hey, what the heck, the wee things need a place to live I figure, and I go back to fretting about the doors, the precedent of boundary breaches, how to create more security.
In no time the kittens are already becoming cats – one orange, one a sandy brown – no longer translucent, but taking more and more substance all the time.It will be good to have these cats around.
Animals on the property is a good thing.
It occurs to me I should consult with the other people here in the community about how to fix the doors – surely someone does carpentry, a locksmith… There must be people I can ask about securing all entrances.
But I realize the problem in this new place, as in so many places I have been…
I don’t know who to trust.Weekly Photo Challenge – Boundaries

Broken Rock Face

May 23, 2015September 14, 2016 Katharine Asals33 Comments

Friday afternoons are sketching class – the best day of the week.
Each week we go to a different location, a park somewhere close by, in the ‘hood, and set up to draw whatever presents itself.
This week was the Scarborough Bluffs.

Such an amazing place – I’d never been this far east and south before, and wow, what a fascinating, strange place, almost like being at the ocean with the strong winds, the sound of waves on the beach, the gulls and kingfishers diving for fish –

A place to come back to when the sun is low on the horizon and the skies glow orange and magenta.
But it was interesting too how harsh and desolate the cliff faces looked in the bright afternoon light, the ravages of time and water on the shapes of the rocks –

My drawing companions tease me that no matter what I draw – a rock, a tree, an animal – it ends up looking vaguely like the human figure.
A drawing of a cliff face also seems to hold a variety of human faces, snouts and orifices –

Another rock drawing suggest reclining figures, hairy crevices and the folds of flesh –

A drawing of tree hints at perhaps a headless torso, arms, a belly-button –

Another tree could be an underarm, or a knee –

That is my hand, my mark, apparently.
Out in the sun and wind, facing these cliffs, blown away by the sheer force of the place, it’s hard to even put pencil to paper, the desire to simply soak in the splendour of the day is so overpowering.
Yes, this too is Toronto…
Weekly Photo Challenge – Broken

Force of nature in the ‘hood

May 9, 2015May 9, 2015 Katharine Asals21 Comments

The other night was a full moon.
I hopped on my bike, heading east on side streets I haven’t explored yet, past, along and through streets I’ve only heard about in the news – gangs, a shooting, a funeral.
I ended up looking over some kind of park at the back of a community centre. A neighbourhood of tall apartment buildings and bungalows. Tons of kids still out playing, even in the dark. Funny thing, how the most notorious neighbourhoods of the city are also raising the most children.Sitting on a bench, listening to the kids and watching the moon, I thought of Em in France, wondered if she was looking at this very moon over there, walking her dog in the evening.
I love this about the moon, it makes me feel how small we are on a spinning planet, all looking out at the same moon.Em tells me she was indeed out seeing that very same full moon, and sends a picture of a glorious, blooming rose.
Here the roses are maybe a month away and everyone is still licking their wounds from the long brutal winter – it’s fierce frigid temperatures and endless quantities of snow, as if somehow it’s responsible for the state of the economy, tension in marriages, the deteriorating health of aging parents, aside from the devastation to any number of tender plants in gardens.
The sudden spring is still a shock of disbelief.Each morning I’m on the patio doing sunrise ceremony, grateful for the new day and hot coffee, delighting in the variations in the clouds, watching them move from wispy vertebrae to fingers of god, hinting at summer storms to come.Even here in the crummy, notorious neighbourhoods, the skies reveal their splendour every day, and up amongst the clouds, geese and ducks pass, looking for places to settle in for the season, seagulls hurry by in singles – this one heading south, that one heading north, another crossing by east to west. Like business men they seem, rushing about with self-important determination.From France Em reminds me: Each fleeting moment is real and true.
And it occurs to me that even weeds have their own kind of beauty.Weekly Photo Challenge – Forces of Nature