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Days in Pictures

Pink or off pink: days 798 — 815

Shoot for the moon

I took my first cherry blossom picture on March 10. The weather still being pretty cold-ish then, there weren’t many flowers out—still, I knew it was only a matter of time. And I was right: blossoms on Beach Avenue, crocuses by the seawall, big camelias on Thurlow Street, delicate little flowers in the West End, clustered blossoms by Sunset Beach just waiting to hatch, and already-hatched blossoms dramatically backlit by the setting sun.

The rest of that March 10 walk was spent not on floral photography, but architectural. My work is moving this summer—not too far, close to Cambie / Broadway Station, but that’s far enough that it would be inconvenient to walk, especially in bad weather. And especially after going to the gym, which I still want to do in the morning. Evening gym does not suit me.

Still, I wanted to keep my options open, so I scouted ahead for good walking / cycling routes. I’ve never even gone biking along the Seawall! Like, ever. I had a bike when I lived in Burnaby many years ago, then put it in storage when I moved to PoCo, and it’s still in storage. I should sell it for scrap and get a new one. Or try those Mobi bikes, see how they feel. I’ll go faster, and I’ll still be free to take pictures of the towers and the upside down towers.

But in the meantime, yikes the transition from “sunlight just kissing the tops of the towers” to “nautical twilight, bitches” was rough. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t all bad, but I don’t know if it was really worth it.

Still, as the sun kept rising earlier and earlier, I got to see all sorts of different colours on my outings. Pink and pinkish-gold, followed by a bit of bi pride. And weird thought: I wonder how much of that pink is really pink, and how much is just a somewhat lighter blue that my eye sees as pink? I honestly don’t know. I’m trying to find a metaphor about blue masculinity, and how any deviation therefrom looks pink by default.

A fun little thought, but I don’t want to overanalyse things too much. This shot of the setting full moon, slashed with a wisp of cloud, so reminiscent of the eyeball-slashing bit in Un chien andalou, is an omen against such overanalysing. Won’t be seeing any more morning moonsets for a while, though. By the time ol’ Luna’s in sync with my photos again the sun will be well up. I’m glad I got these two moonsets.

I think it’s all about persistence… or as Taking Our Places calls it, “showing up,” which has different connotations and which I’m going to use from now on. Keep going, be patient, and you never know what treasures you’ll find. It’s showing up that let my team play better than we ever had at Queen Vicki, and me in particular be a decent captain. First time I did it for a big tournament but things turned out all right, even the scorekeeping which I didn’t expect I’d have to do, and I seriously panicked at first, because even though I’m certified it was my first time running the very, very complicated charts.

I know I still have a long way to go, but here’s the bottom line: I think I leveled up this weekend, and that happened because I kept showing up and built up enough experience points. I’ve still got a long way to go; in particular, I need to keep improving my skills in order to make it back in Competitive next year. Or even Advanced? Hey, why not. Might as well shoot for the moon!

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